At the beginning of September, Sony announced the shutdown of the servers of the very unsuccessful multiplayer shooter Concord. The decision apparently also surprised the developers themselves Firewalk Studioswho previously claimed that they have time and hope that the upcoming new content will interest players. In his place, they are now in limbo and waiting to see what happens next.
Kotaku reports on the situation at the studio. According to the magazine's sources, the head of development should have announced his resignation to the employees in the previous days Ryan Ellis. The Bungie veteran (he was Destiny 2's creative director) was slated to take on a supporting role.
“Ryan believed deeply in the project and in bringing players together through entertainment,” one of the former developers stated that Ellis put so much of himself into the game that it caused him great stress and he was unable to even speak when Concord's failure was announced. “Regardless of the things that could have been done differently during development … he's a good person with a big heart.”
Firewalk Studios joined the PlayStation Studios family in 2023. The development of Concord took several years with a reported budget of over $100 million. According to analyst estimates, the game sold around 25,000 units and is a major failure for Sony.
It is currently unclear what will happen next. Ellis wrote in early September that they wanted to explore the possibilities and come back in the future with a better game or ideas that would help Concord find players. The question is whether Sony will allow them to do so. There was speculation that Concord would be released as part of PS Plus, possibly as a free-to-play game.