After years of console dominance, we’re starting to see cracks in the PlayStation brand as it tries to make a brutal push towards live service dominance. There is no clearer example of this than the resounding failure of Concord and the closure of Firewalk Studio.
This week, PlayStation announced that it is shutting down Firewalk Studio, a developer founded in 2018 that Sony acquired just last year. The reason for the acquisition and closure is the same: Concord, a live-service PvP shooter released on PS5 and PC, made by developers who played games like Destiny and Call of Duty.
To be fair, Concord bombed. According to SteamDB datathe number of PC players has never exceeded 1,000 and is an estimate sales data both on PS5 and Steam were terrible. At the time of its disastrous launch, I outlined the reasons why Concord didn’t land, including the eight years it spent in development causing it to completely miss the hero shooter trend that was started with Team Fortress 2 in 2007 and peaked with Overwatch in 2016:
“Knowing the cost and time required to develop AAA online games, studios must evaluate, predict and/or simply guess what will be the next huge hit. What games will be successful in four, five, six years if we start creating them now? Will audiences still be interested in this type of game when we’re finally ready to release it? To get the correct answer, in practice it is necessary to operate the services of a fortune teller.
Basically, if you start making a game based on what’s currently popular, it’s probably too overdue.
This rather uncomplicated mistake is compounded by the exorbitant development costs of Concord. The huge budget that allowed for PlayStation’s signature, best-in-class visuals and a library of cutscenes that we will never see meant that while its rivals were released in a free-to-play version, Sony decided to sell the game for 40 dollars. Combined with low consumer awareness and an abundance of free, high-quality alternatives, Concord’s price puts it at a huge – and, as it turns out, disastrous – disadvantage.
In terms of content, it’s demanding to say that Concord was fully developed at launch. The character sets were clunky at best, the systems – which Firewalk says combine elements of fighting games and card games – were mostly vague, and the map designs left much to be desired. Parts of the internet will say that Concord’s characters also doomed the game. Although this is an argument that is demanding to believe, considering that Deadlock, a Valve-developed shooter, was released around the same time, sparking widespread excitement and a growing number of players. Deadlock doesn’t even have a definitive character roster, even though it’s a free-to-play game.
All this means, however, that Concord has taken the PlayStation brand by storm, and not just because of its commercial failure. The way Sony handled the whole situation was disastrous. It’s one thing to release a game on a flop, but it’s one thing to have the game pulled from stores and player accounts just a few weeks after release Then shutting down a just-acquired studio and dispersing its creators into the wilds of an already miserable gaming industry in 2024 are decisions made in panic by a company unsure of where to go next.
This type of failure and subsequent panic is alien to newfangled Sony. Since the launch of PlayStation 4, its gaming brand has been almost unstoppable, releasing critically acclaimed game after game and beating out its rivals in the console race. Nintendo all but ended the console wars, choosing instead to be everyone’s second console of choice, while Xbox spent years rebuilding, trying to get close to second place again. But while the platform’s signature single-player games like God of War, Ghost of Tsushima, Spider-Man and The Last of Us were winning awards and sales, the gaming industry had changed. Industry analysts like it Media may say that most gamers prefer single-player games, but the truth is that in 2023 we spent 80% of our gaming time on just 66 games, most of which are online games such as Fortnite, Minecraft, Call of Duty and League of Legends. Live service is where the attention and money is.
So it’s simple to see why Sony would be interested in adopting an aggressive live gaming strategy beyond the potential profits. First-party PlayStation teams like Naughty Dog and Insomniac spend nearly half a decade developing AAA single-player games before they’re released. So, if Sony has a few games available on its live service to distract gamers between major AAA releases, it suddenly has a pretty good-looking release calendar that alternates between single-player game releases and on-service content live.
Perhaps with this in mind, Sony acquired Destiny 2 developer Bungie in 2022, marking the most significant acquisition of a live-services studio to date. That’s not all; at the time, Sony announced that it planned to launch 10 games with a live service by the end of fiscal year 2025. Last year, apparently in response to a behind-the-scenes realization of how tough this goal was to achieve, Sony lowered that number to just six. With the closure of Concord and numerous layoffs at Bungie, it’s clear that the era of PlayStation’s live services is off to a rocky start. So what can Sony do about it?
First, it’s significant to understand Sony’s current situation and goals for live services. PlayStation has canceled many online games, some officially confirmed, others only known through rumors and reports. These include Naughty Dogs’ PvP project The Last of Us, the online Spider-Man game, the live Twisted Metal service, and Payback, the third-person spinoff of Destiny.
As for the projects that are reportedly still in development, there are Bungie’s Marathon (which just received an official update from the developers and seems secure for now), as well as two Horizon games that have been circulating in rumors – one designed for co-op and the other MMO. In 2023, Sony also acquired Haven Studios, a recent game studio founded by former Ubisoft veteran Jade Raymond. While Haven was acquired for its own upcoming AAA PvP project, Fairgames, Sony also planned for the studio to support bolster its other live services efforts – until its closure, Haven was helping Firewalk develop Concord.
Sony’s most successful contribution to the live service genre to date comes from a studio it doesn’t actually own. Arrowhead Studio’s hugely successful Helldivers 2 may display the PlayStation Studios logo upon launch, but it is published exclusively by Sony. And while its launch was met with great fanfare, recent updates to Helldivers have been less well received by the community, further pointing to the long-term challenges facing PlayStation in the live services arena.
The strategy here is confusing at best. Both The Last of Us and Spider-Man are hugely popular games for Sony, but not even trying to provide a multiplayer component when PlayStation is so focused on this generation feels like a missed opportunity. Meanwhile, Sony is also willing to release games from recent studios like Firewalk for $40 in a genre dominated by premium and free-to-play games, which is a huge risk unless Sony believes the PlayStation brand is sturdy enough to boost the first game from a relatively unknown studio. And without giving Concord time to make any significant changes post-launch, Sony immediately shuts down the studio.
In its official statement, Sony says it will “learn from Concord’s experience and continue to enhance our live services capabilities to ensure future growth in this area.” However, with so much wrong with Concord, it seems like Sony should look at everything they did with Concord and do the opposite.
Maybe don’t be so arrogant as to believe that the PlayStation name alone is enough to promote a game in an oversaturated genre. And if a live game doesn’t meet its goals a week after launch, maybe don’t pull it from stores right away. And any potential developer in talks to join the PlayStation family can be assured that they won’t be shut down if their first game isn’t a hit.
Matt Kim is senior features editor at IGN. You can reach it @lawoftd.
