Concord, Sony's highly anticipated hero shooter developed by first-party studio Firewalk Studios, has suffered low player counts as people are complaining about various issues, such as the game's lengthy matchmaking times.
This week, the game launched to a Steam concurrent player count peak of 697 based on SteamDB. This unusually low player count has led to many people calling Concord's launch dismal as an understatement.
Concord's Low Player Count
Despite the game only getting a three-figure player count, the detail that caught many people's eyes was that the game had supposedly been in development for eight years.
This means that the hero shooter started its journey around 2016, which is the same year that Blizzard released Overwatch.
Firewalk Studios is filled up with veterans who had previously worked for Bungie and Activision, which are two companies that are known for their online PvP shooters.
This was why it was not surprising that Concord aimed to go head-to-head against Overwatch to gain a fanbase, according to IGN.
Concord joins a growing list of games that are taking nearly a decade from inception to development to release. It is now that the community is seeing the financial and creative consequences of an overly long development cycle.
If developers spend too much time working on a project, the ideas that were once novel could no longer be popular among fans.
Additionally, the time and money that were spent over those development years need to be recouped one way or another. This can be seen with Concord's $40 cost of entry when many of its competitors are free-to-play.
Extremely Long Matchmaking Wait Times
There are various issues that players are now complaining about regarding Concord and is most likely a direct result of the game's low player count.
Many people are experiencing extremely long wait times for matchmaking due to there not being a lot of people playing, said PushSquare.
During Concord's launch weekend, one PlayStation 5 player reportedly waited up to eight minutes in order to find a match outside of peak hours. This was something that was obviously not good for a multiplayer-only title.
With its various issues, and again, low player count, many people have given Concord the title of biggest flop of the year on social media platforms.
Many users on Reddit, TikTok, and other platforms have gloated, posted screenshots of SteamDB concurrency charts, and claimed that "it rules" that a game can fail so epically, according to PCGamer.
