What went wrong with Concord?

Sony's and Firewalk Studios' Concord for PlayStation 5 and PC finally launched on 23 August after eight years in the making and a cost of $100m. Two weeks later, the first-person shooter is being taken offline due to poor sales, and Firewalk Studios will issue refunds to those customers that did buy the game.

Gamers are calling it the biggest flop in gaming since Atari’s E.T. in 1982, and certainly the biggest AAA flop in recent history. While gamers mock the rumoured PS5 Pro design, we ask how did Sony get Concord so wrong?

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Concord reportedly only sold 25,000 copies and achieved a peak of just 697 players on Steam. In a PlayStation blog post this week, game director Ryan Ellis announced that the game was being taken offline and that Firewalk would "explore options, including those that will better reach our players". 

Over on X, some have put the blame on the game's character design, complaining of "ugly, bland characters" that borrowed too heavily from Guardians Of The Galaxy. "Hero shooters live and die by their characters and these were terrible," one person wrote.

Despite what some claim, this is nothing to do with diversity. Pronouns don't put people off a good video game, but uninspiring aesthetics and a lack of personality do. It's true that if people aren't attracted to a game at a single glance and inspired by the characters, it probably won't attract players. Responding to the gameplay trailer posted on YouTube three months ago, one person suggested that "Clippy from Microsoft Word had more personality than every character".

Concord - Gameplay Trailer | PS5 Games - YouTube

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But there was more than just the character design at fault with Concord. With some already predicting the fall of the live services model, Concord was an AAA live service game with a $40 price tag competing against established titles like Overwatch that are available to play for free and have years of content behind them.

To sell in that context, Concord needed to have one hell of a selling point, and it simply didn't have one. Some people are saying they didn't even know the game existed until it was cancelled.

"How many live service games have gone offline in the last couple of years? In the end, anything that requires a server is going to either burn out or become engulfed in gacha mechanics," one person wrote on X. "I think it looks like a pretty competent shooter all things considered, but I have zero interest in the story," was one comment on Reddit.

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Another part of the problem was the length of time it took to make the game. By the time it finally arrived, it felt like it had arrived in a time capsule. Numerous multiplayer shooters have bombed in the meantime, with only a handful, such as Valorant, gaining traction. 

It seems wrong for developers to cop the flak for an unsustainable business model. I just hope Valve's Deadlock doesn't face a similar fate.