Skip to main content

Concord is going offline after just two weeks following disastrous launch

Lennox near a wall of fire in Concord.
Firewalk Studios

After an infamously rocky launch with low player counts and mediocre reviews, PlayStation’s live-service hero shooter Concord is going offline, and the developers are issuing full refunds.

Firewalk Studios game director Ryan Ellis announced the move in a PlayStation blog post on Tuesday, saying that the studio needs time to “determine the best path ahead.” As such, the game will be removed from storefronts and taken offline on Friday, September 6 — just two weeks after launch.

Recommended Videos

“However, while many qualities of the experience resonated with players, we also recognize that other aspects of the game and our initial launch didn’t land the way we’d intended,” Ellis wrote. “Therefore, at this time, we have decided to take the game offline beginning September 6, 2024, and explore options, including those that will better reach our players.”

Please enable Javascript to view this content

The developers are also offering full refunds for game owners. PlayStation owners will receive a refund back to their original payment method. Steam and Epic Games Store will refund players over the next few days, while players who purchased the game through a retailer like Amazon will need to contact that retailer directly.

The blog post doesn’t explicitly state what Firewalk Studios will be focusing on to reinvent the game, but there are a ton of criticisms from both reviewers and the player base. Whether Concord was just too late to the hero-shooter trend, didn’t have anything original to bring to the table, needed some gameplay retooling, or players are dealing with live-service fatigue, there’s a lot that the team needs to look at if they want to bring Concord back online.

Concord has been in development for around eight years, according to lead character designer Jon Weisnewski. Firewalk Studios was acquired by Sony Interactive Entertainment in 2023 as part of its larger push into live-service games, coupled with its purchase of Destiny 2 developer Bungie. Ahead of launch, Firewalk Studios was committed to three seasons; the first, called Tempest, was scheduled to launch in October. It also had two beta periods in July with all freegunners (the playable characters) available.

Carli Velocci
Carli is a technology, culture, and games editor and journalist. They were the Gaming Lead and Copy Chief at Windows Central…
Concord didn’t fail PlayStation. PlayStation failed Concord
A character wields a rocket launcher in Concord.

Ever since its disastrous launch, there’s a lot of discussion about how Concord failed for PlayStation. It's a fair conversation, but it's not the only one that needs to be had in order to understand how we got here. We can't ignore how PlayStation failed Concord and its developers.

Tuesday afternoon, Hermen Hulst announced that Concord, which was shut down two weeks after its launch earlier this summer, would not be coming back. On top of that, he explained that Sony was shutting down Concord developer Firewalk Studios and mobile game developer Neon Koi. He cites the move as “part of our ongoing efforts to strengthen SIE’s Studio Business.”

Read more
Concord studio shuts down as Sony sunsets the troubled shooter
Two characters face off in Concord.

Sony announced that it's officially sunsetting Concord and closing its developer Firewalk Studios after a disastrous launch that led to it taking the game offline after just two weeks.

Sony Interactive Entertainment (SIE), which acquired Firewalk in 2023, revealed in an email sent out to employees on Tuesday that it's shutting down the studio, along with mobile developer Neon Koi, in order to "strengthen SIE's Studio Business." That means two studios acquired by Sony over the past two years have been closed.

Read more
A Horizon online game is reportedly in the works ahead of Forbidden West follow-up
Aloy standing in front of the Hollywood sign in Horizon Forbidden West.

The Horizon series is seemingly everywhere right now, with Horizon Zero Dawn Remastered and Lego Horizon Adventures on the way, and there's more in the pipeline beyond just the expected third entry in the main series. Bloomberg video game reporter Jason Schreier reports that the next franchise game won't be that third game, but rather an online project that "a lot of people" are working on.

"Horizon online is their next project not whatever the third single-player game looks like, so that one might be a ways off," Schreier said on the Spawn Wave podcast over the weekend. The conversation starts at around 54:27.

Read more