Sony has taken the unprecedented step of cancelling a game after release, even though it received okay reviews.
Concord will shut down on 6 September 2024, just a couple of weeks after launch.
Times have been tough for live service games of late. Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League failed to attract fans in significant numbers, which has sadly lead to developer RockSteady having to layoff some staff, and now Sony has felt the pinch with one of its long-awaited exclusives.
It has revealed that the PS5 and PC game Concord is being taken offline less than two weeks after it launched.
In a statement to fans, the game's director at developer Firewalk Studios, Ryan Ellis, admitted that the launch had not gone as planned: "While many qualities of the experience resonated with players, we also recognise that other aspects of the game and our initial launch didn’t land the way we’d intended," he wrote on the PlayStation Blog.
This has resulted in the game being delisted from digital stores, including the PlayStation Store, ahead of servers being cut off from 6 September 2024. Physical copies are being removed from shelves.
All players who have already purchased Concord on PlayStation 5 or PC are being offered a refund, including those who bought it on Steam, the Epic Games Store or from a high-street retailer.
What went wrong for Concord?
The game's troubles started soon after launch, with mixed reviews leading to poor sales. It is claimed that Sony only managed to sell approximately 25,000 copies of the multiplayer shooter in its first week.
It was also said that Firewalk Studios' debut game had as few as 35 players online at times. That's hardly ideal when you're looking for like-minded gamers to pair up with.
It's also alleged that Concord was in development for around eight years.
It's currently unclear whether it will return in some form in the future, but the step to remove it from sale entirely when they game itself isn't specifically broken is unprecedented. In all honesty, from our playing experience with it, it's not even bad.
Let's just hope Firewalk Studios can recover from such a blow. And as for Sony, we're pretty sure it'll be just fine – especially with Astro Bot coming just around the corner.
