Concord, PlayStation Studios and Firewalk’s newly launched hero-shooter, will go offline on September 6. The game launched back on August 23.
Since it’s an online multiplayer game, it will become unplayable in any form once the servers go down.
Refunds are being offered, as per PlayStation Blog. This will be automtaically issued for those that purchased the game digitally.
Concord was envisioned to be a multiplayer hero shooter where its main hooks are new cinematics delivered weekly and many subtle tweaks to the moment-to-moment gameplay compared to other hero shooters. It also had two seasons worth of post-launch content planned out.
However, the gameplay isn’t compelling enough to attract players. SteamDB records Concord’s highest concurrent players on Steam only at 607 people, with daily concurrent numbers averaging around the hundreds (not counting players on Epic Games Store and PS5- which should be around the same ballpark).
Its hero designs were univerally unloved- not because they are catering to a specific demographic as even the alleged target market couldn’t care less about these heroes.
Check out our review of Concord here.
Concord was in development for six (or eight by some accounts) years, and it only was live for about two weeks.
At least we’ll see one more media of Concord as part of Studio Blur’s upcoming anthology of shorts, Secret Level.
Last year, we saw another high-profile live-service blunder that was Redfall. That eventually lead to the developers Arkane Austin to be closed down. The game was fortunately updated to have offline support, so any curious players who want to check it out (knowing full well it’s not a particular good game) can still do so. The same cannot be said to Concord.
If anything, let this be a reminder that there are more dead live service games than they are actively supported ones. Chasing live service money with a AAA budget was not a smart bet, and hopefully developers are not forced to chase trends but make mulitplayer games that are genuninely fun that can be played for hours on end. Like Helldivers 2, which has been quite the success for PlayStation, in contrast to this news.
In other news, Square Enix announced its multiplayer game Foamstars will be free-to-play.