PlayStation’s Concord will go offline just two weeks after launch.
In a blog post, the company confirmed that sales for the multiplayer shooter will “cease immediately,” and all players will be offered a full refund on both PS5 and PC.
Ryan Ellis, game director at Concord developer Firewalk Studios, acknowledged that “aspects of the game and our initial launch didn’t land the way we’d intended.” He added that the team will take the time to “explore options, including those that will better reach our players.”
Presumably, one such option will be a free-to-play model after Concord was criticized for its $49.99 price tag, although it’s unclear whether this would even improve the game’s fortunes. Players had also criticized the game for being similar to other “hero shooters” like Overwatch 2 and for having uninteresting character designs.
News of Concord‘s shutdown follows reports that the game sold extremely poorly across PS5 and PC, which were seemingly corroborated by dire public player counts on Steam. It’s a major — and rare — move from PlayStation, as companies traditionally don’t delist and refund new games entirely. The Japanese gaming giant did do that for Cyberpunk 2077 in 2020, but that was due to widespread technical issues. That Concord‘s shuttering is coming just two weeks after launch speaks to how poorly the game must have been doing.
Concord is also the second in a major string of online games that PlayStation has been aggressively pursuing as of late. Earlier this year, the company did see great success with Helldivers 2, which it no doubt viewed as an encouraging start to its live service push. However, it remains to be seen how the significant failure of Concord might lead PlayStation to reevaluate its multiplayer games strategy.
Image credit: PlayStation
Source: PlayStation
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