Sony announced today that its PlayStation shooter Concord will be shutting down on September 6, 2024, and all players will receive a full refund.
Announced on PlayStation Blogdirector Ryan Ellis said, “While many features of the experience resonated with players, we also recognize that other aspects of the game and our initial launch did not deliver the results we expected.”
Concord will therefore be taken offline so that Sony and developer Firewalk Studios can “consider options, including those that will better reach our players.”
The game will be removed from sale immediately, and anyone who purchased it from the PlayStation Store or PlayStation Direct will receive a refund to their original payment method. Those who purchased it from Steam and the Epic Games Store will receive their refund in the coming days.
Physical returns are a bit more tough, but players can contact individual retailers to get a refund. Sony will likely set up a system with them to fully process all refunds. “Players will no longer have access to the game after a refund is issued,” Sony explained.
Concord withdrawn less than two weeks after launch
Concord launched on August 23, 2024, meaning it was pulled from sale just 11 days after its launch and disabled for all players just two weeks later. Even those who purchased Concord will no longer be able to play after September 6.
Its launch was nothing low of a disaster, with analysts telling IGN that it likely sold just 25,000 copies. It debuted to a dire peak of 697 players on Steam, making the 12,786-player Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League, which was called a disappointment by Warner Bros. Discovery boss David Zaslav and caused revenue to drop by $200 million, look like a titan.
This comes after eight years of development and likely tens of millions, if not hundreds of millions, of dollars spent by Sony, a company already rumored to be moving away from a live-services-based future. Sony CEO Hiroki Totoki has only committed to releasing six of the twelve live-service games in development, with one based on The Last of Us already canceled.
Ryan Dinsdale is a freelance reporter for IGN. He’ll be talking Witcher all day long.
