Concord was an absolute disaster. It was so bad that it was yanked from release after just two weeks, and players who had bought it were offered refunds. The fallout was always going to take things down. Now Sony Interactive Entertainment has announced it is permanently closing Firewalk Studios, the game developer behind the debacle.
Sony issued a statement yesterday confirming the news, and also closing mobile game developer Neon Koi.
Sony took “Concord” offline, pulled it from sale, and offered refunds to all players who bought it just two weeks after it launched in August with terrible reviews and even worse sales.
There was some talk that Sony would try and salvage the situation by bringing the game back in some form. Not anymore. It is dead. It is a deceased game. PlayStation co-CEO Hermen Hulst was as blunt as you expect somebody called Herman to be:
“Regarding Firewalk, as announced in early September, certain aspects of Concord were exceptional, but others did not land with enough players, and as a result we took the game offline.
We have spent considerable time these past few months exploring all our options. After much thought, we have determined the best path forward is to permanently sunset the game and close [Firewalk Studios].
I want to thank all of Firewalk for their craftsmanship, creative spirit and dedication. The PvP first person shooter genre is a competitive space that’s continuously evolving, and unfortunately, we did not hit our targets with this title.
We will take the lessons learned from Concord and continue to advance our live service capabilities to deliver future growth in this area.”
Concord was apparently in development for eight years and cost around $400 million to make. So this seems like a good time to step back and ask:
What the hell has gone wrong with video game development?
Like me, I am sure many of you were Amiga or Atari ST kids, who then branched off into various consoles and/or PC gaming. A youth of a thousand 3.5″ floppy discs with a hundred more games released each month from seemingly endless little studios. Aspergers as fuck eggheads slinging code from small rented offices, writing what entertained them and they wanted to play.
Something has gone dreadfully wrong out there in the land of game development. What is it, and what can be done to fix it?