After a launch into “blended” consumer evaluations and tiny concurrent participant counts on Steam, Sony has introduced that Concord goes offline on September 6 so it may determine the place to go from right here.
Sales of Concord can be halted “instantly,” Firewalk Studios recreation director Ryan Ellis stated on the PlayStation Blog. Refunds can be provided routinely on all storefronts “over the approaching days,” whereas anybody who bought a bodily copy might want to “confer with the refund means of the retailer you bought it from to acquire your refund.”
This is an extremely quick shutdown for a web based recreation—Concord solely launched on August 23—however was additionally most likely inevitable. PS5 participant counts aren’t shared publicly, however the Steam numbers are nothing wanting catastrophic: The all-time peak concurrent participant depend, based on SteamDB, was simply 697, whereas proper now solely 30 individuals are taking part in.
The pace and suddenness of the shutdown is much more notable in gentle of the truth that Concord reportedly had been in growth for eight years, an astonishing period of time (and, little doubt, cash) for a recreation that folded in lower than two weeks.
Ellis stated Firewalk will “discover choices” following the shutdown to be able to “higher attain our gamers,” and one apparent transfer is to make Concord free to play. At launch it was priced at $40/£35/€40, which put it at an instantaneous drawback in a world stuffed with free-to-play hero shooters.
That problem was compounded by the truth that it actually did not provide something that made it stand out from the gang—”Concord’s occasional moments of satisfaction are waylaid by a aggressive shooter expertise that is too typically sluggish, boring, and devoid of any attention-grabbing ways,” we stated in our 45% overview—and naturally the abysmal participant numbers, which makes it onerous to seek out and end matches, did not assist.
But it is also potential that Concord writer Sony decides to drag the plug for good. BioWare’s Anthem suffered a really comparable destiny: After a disastrous launch, Electronic Arts dedicated to a “full overhaul” of the sport, however a yr later put it down for good. Concord’s issues go nicely past simply its pricing, and the status it has been saddled with by this entire flop of a launch can be robust to shake it doesn’t matter what Sony and Firewalk Studios do with it.
