Sony recently stated that the PlayStation hero shooter Concord will be discontinued on September 6, 2024 and that all players will receive a complete refund.
“While many qualities of the experience resonated with gamers, we also understand that other aspects of the game and our original launch did not land the way we would intended,” director Ryan Ellis said in a statement posted on the PlayStation Blog.
Therefore, Concord will be pulled offline so that Firewalk Studios, the developer, and Sony can “explore possibilities, including ones that will better reach our players.”
Anyone who bought the game through PlayStation Direct or the PlayStation Store will receive a refund using their original payment methods, and the title will be taken off the market right once. In the upcoming days, refunds will be given to customers who bought on Steam and the Epic Games Store.
While getting a physical refund is a little more difficult, players can still check with specific stores. Sony will likely work with them to set up a mechanism that enables full processing of all reimbursements. Sony stated clearly that “players will no longer have access to the game once refunded.”
Less than two weeks after launch, Concord was cancelled.
Concord was released on August 23, 2024, which means that it was taken offline for all users two weeks after it was first made available for purchase and only 11 days after its introduction. After September 6, even those that purchased Concord will not be allowed to play.
Analysts told Gamexta that since its launch, which was a complete failure, it has probably only sold 25,000 units. It launched to a disastrous 697 peak concurrent players on Steam, making the 12,786 players of Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League—which caused a $200 million revenue blow and was labeled a letdown by Warner Bros. Discovery boss David Zaslav—look like giants.
This is the result of eight years of development and perhaps hundreds or maybe millions of dollars invested by Sony, a business that is already reportedly moving away from a future heavily reliant on live services. Only six of the twelve live service games that are now under production will be released, according to Sony President Hiroki Totoki; one The Last of Us-based game has already been scrapped.
