A sad story with a natural ending: Sony has shut down Firewalk, the studio behind the failed shooter Concord
Perhaps there has never been such a loud, natural and obvious failure in the gaming industry, comparable to the release of the network shooter Concord.
Sony hoped to conquer the market of service games and compete with the super-popular shooters of similar format. As a result, after eight years of work on the game and spent either 200 or 400 million dollars (the data differ) Concord absolutely nobody was interested in it, and its sales did not exceed 15 000 copies.
Here's What We Know
After the rapid closure of Concord's servers, Firewalk studio claimed that the shooter will still return in an updated form, but it's obvious that this will not happen: Sony officially closed the developer, and at the same time the mobile game maker Neon Koi was cut down.
PlayStation head Hermen Hulst sent an internal email to employees announcing Firewalk's closure:
After carefully reviewing the situation, we have come to the conclusion that the best solution is to permanently end support for the game and close the studio. I would like to thank the Firewalk team for their skill, creative spirit and dedication.
The genre of first-person PvP shooters is a constantly evolving competitive environment, and unfortunately in the case of this game we did not achieve our goals. We will learn from Concord and continue to expand our game-services capabilities to ensure future growth.
Bloomberg journalist Jason Schreier's sources report that the closure will leave 231 Firewalk employees and 38 from Neon Koi out of work.
Sony's closure today of two studios - Concord developer Firewalk Studios and mobile game maker Neon Koi - will result in 210 people losing their jobs, a spokesperson tells Bloomberg News. Firewalk had 172 employees, while Neon Koi had 38. https://t.co/ksiVFpfWLs
- Jason Schreier (@jasonschreier) October 29, 2024
It's bad enough when people lose their jobs, but you can't release games of such questionable quality, especially when the main goal is to conquer a crowded market.
Source: Bloomberg
