At approximately 10:30 AM PST/1:30 PM EST on September 6, the Concord servers officially shut down. Sony’s troubled live game didn’t even make it past two weeks, failing to fill its beta and launching to tragically low concurrent user counts on Steam. Ultimately, it’s estimated to have sold only about 25,000 copies, an incredibly low number by first-party release standards.
Concord servers are currently offline.
Thanks again to all the Freegunners who joined us in the Concord galaxy. photo: twitter.com/o1dTywrqUx
— Concord (@PlayConcord) September 6, 2024
On BlueskyCircan CEO Mat Piscatella called Concord’s closure “unprecedented,” not to mention that Anthem was the best-selling game of February 2019 and is still playable. When asked how it compares to the likes of The Day Before and Crucible, two other games that were shut down shortly after launch, Piscatella said it “reads differently to me than anything that came before it,” describing it as “absolutely rejected” by players.
This makes Concord one of the most unusual news stories of the year — a first-party release that ultimately never had a chance to come to fruition.
Does Concord have a future as a free-to-play game?
Still, at least some fans are wondering if Sony’s shooter has a future. Could Concord be free-to-play? That’s one of the large questions on platforms like X/Twitter and Resetera as fans debate Sony’s future. Before Concord closed, Forbes journalist Paul Tassi called its transition to free-to-play model is “inevitable” although I wondered if it would make any difference.
There are certainly plenty of points of contention. The lineup didn’t resonate with fans, and the art style and writing have been variously described as a sort of Guardians of the Galaxy on a different brand. There’s also little innovation to distinguish Concord from other hero shooters. In a market flooded with live-service games, success is increasingly a zero-sum game, and Concord finds itself on the wrong side of the divide.
Still, we found things to like about Concord. In our review, we described the competitive gameplay as “fantastic” and praised the map design. Towards the end of the game, a group of trophy hunters rushed in at the last minute to try to get their hands on what would soon become one of PlayStation’s rarest platinum titles, even going so far as to jump off cliffs to earn experience points.
So will he come back? One It will reset user opines. “I suspect it will probably end up being F2P and then quietly shut down if it doesn’t find an audience quickly. Doing that will be a hell of a task since the game was designed around progression, not monetization. I feel terrible for Firewalk, so much time invested in what is clearly a pretty good game, and it happened right after launch. I have a terrible feeling there will be layoffs soon.”
Piscatella, for his part, is uncertain. “On one hand, the game and the IP were so emphatically rejected that you’d think it couldn’t be saved. On the other hand, so few people know about the game that maybe it could be brought back with a different model and a significant refresh. I think it’s an unprecedented situation where all options are on the table, so anyone’s guess is probably as good as mine.”
What’s next for Sony?
If that’s anything to go by, Concord isn’t completely done yet. As we reported yesterday, Concord is still set to appear in Secret Level , Tim Miller’s upcoming Prime Video anthology series that also includes God of War , Mega Man , and Warhammer 40K . While it seems unlikely that it will reignite interest in the franchise, it does at least provide a spark of life for the series.
The future of Firewalk Studios is unclear. The studio behind Concord was founded as part of UnlikeMonsters in 2018 and acquired by PlayStation in 2023. Design director Josh Hamrick tweeted all weekthanking fans and saying goodbye as the servers went down with the words “FREEGUNNER FOR LIFE”.
At one point he wrote nostalgically, “I started at Firewalk in the spring of 2019. There were less than a dozen of us developers working shoulder to shoulder in a friend’s attic.”
Meanwhile, Sony has more free-to-play games on the way, including Fairgame$ and Bungie’s Marathon. Marathon has had its share of struggles, at one point having to replace its CEO due to layoffs and other issues. Little has been shown of Fairgame$ beyond a CG trailer, but GI.biz’s Chris Dring recently said he’s heard positive feedback about the game. In either case, the future of Sony’s live-service strategy is uncertain, though PlayStation can at least claim one win thanks to the success of Helldivers 2 in the first half of the year (though it’s also struggled recently).
For now, Sony can take solace in Astro Bot, which is both a single-player game and is getting rave reviews. As for whether Concord will ever get another chance, we’ll just have to see.
Kat Bailey is IGN’s news director and also co-host of Nintendo Voice Chat. Have a tip? DM her @the_katbot.
