Sony shuts down Concord!

https://blog.playstation.com/2024/09/03/an-important-update-on-concord/

Concord fans — we've been listening closely to your feedback since the launch of Concord on PlayStation 5 and PC and want to thank everyone who has joined the journey aboard the Northstar. Your support and the passionate community that has grown around the game has meant the world to us.

However, while many qualities of the experience resonated with players, we also recognize that other aspects of the game and our initial launch didn't land the way we'd intended. Therefore, at this time, we have decided to take the game offline beginning September 6, 2024, and explore options, including those that will better reach our players.

While we determine the best path ahead, Concord sales will cease immediately and we will begin to offer a full refund for all gamers who have purchased the game for PS5 or PC. If you purchased the game for PlayStation 5 from the PlayStation Store or PlayStation Direct, a refund will be issued back to your original payment method.

Customers who purchased from other digital storefronts will also be refunded. More information about refunds from Steam and Epic can be found below:

SteamStore– Steam Store will refund players who bought the game over the coming days. Steam will send confirmation of the refund once it has been processed.

Epic Games Store– Epic Games Store will refund players who bought the game over the coming days and will contact each customer directly to confirm that the refund has been processed.

Other retailer refunds– For customers who have purchased a physical copy at a retailer location outside of PlayStation directly, please refer to the refund process of the retailer you purchased it from to obtain your refund.

Once refunded, players will no longer have access to the game.

What say you fellow SW friends? Are you surprised by this news??

Damn, gonna have to refund all 900 copies sold.

Whoa! Holy....!!! And 8 years of work and it's gone just like that😨

I totally did not see that coming!

Lmao!

Pronouns in the bios, characters designed with a Diversity tool and trash live service.

Way to go guys... 🤣

Sony's only first party developed game this year so far, and it's closed up shop in 1 week. Thank god for Astro 2!

Makes zero sense to shut the game down at this point. Why not just drop the $40 price and make it free to play to see what happens.

I think that answer theEroica's question... You can't flop harder than effectively zero sales 😯.

Rumored 8 years in development. Rumored $200M development cost. Sony even made controllers for the game. You know what they say, everything woke turns to ****. Let this be a massive lesson for Sony. Keep a tighter leash on your activist devs, better yet, don't hire activist devs or make sure your vision is clear so they don’t muck it up.

Review after review found the graphics and sound were great, it’s a competent shooter…it’s just…bland. Character models suck. Pronouns. Even the maps were meh. $40 when other similar shooters are free to play (did you hear that XDefiant will stop getting support if the game doesn’t do better by season 3?) Then you add in the behind the scenes drama at the studio, devs going off the rails against gamers on social media. Just a bomb waiting to explode.

It makes perfect sense. There is no reason to continue to pay the developers and provide updates on a dead game.

Wow!! They were projected to have sold 25k copies.

If they refunding all of those.. then I guess Concord didn't sell any copies at all??

Sony GaaS ambitions are done, they can't support a struggling game attempting to bring in a larger audience without that initial momentum. They could have brought in a surge of players by putting it as a monthly PS Plus game, putting it as a free EGS title, or adding it to PS Plus Extra/Premium. But apparently the refund everyone option was best because Sony not going to do Game Pass thing by putting new games on there, they're sticking to that line in the sand no matter what.

Wow. Thought they'd at least give it a month.

Biggest flop in history confirmed.

😂🤣

Yeah dude lol

Did so bad.. they refunded everyone and pulled the game off the market Jesus christ lol

Perhaps they feel that morally they need to refund first and then re-release it as free to play in some version later down the road? Wouldn't be fair to the 25 k players who bought it to just go free to play.

The potential income is miniscule compared to the cost of the game anyway. A company of Sony's size probably don't even care. Better to try to save a little bit of face perhaps...

Kinda crazy they didn't even let this thing go F2P. Perhaps they actually do have a PvE or campaign cooking to some degree and are just cutting the cord so they can pivot it entirely. I really do hope that's the case because the gameplay and lore are actually solid. A rebranding with a new improved art direction could do wonders imo.

Came here to say this, but realistically the beta was free and barely anyone played it.

I thought initially that offering it on PS+ would increase subscriptions and increase players, but I honestly dont think anyone WANTS this game despite fanboys on here and X defending it.

The game hit 32 players the other day. THIRTY-TWO!

They should stop making live service games console exclusive.

Must be a fun work day over there today

It just doesn't make any sense... instead of reviving a dormant IP that already has a name behind it they decide to chase after a trend thats already dying in the already oversaturated hero shooter market.

Now they will think gaas won't work when in actuality people want something good... not generic crap that just chases after something that already exists... foolish.

Just wanted to share this.

UT2004 has more active players right now and it hasn't had online servers in many years lol

That was quick. At least you can play Anthem to this day.

You thinking the game failed for those reasons is even more hilarious.😂

can expand that out to sony's entire ps5 strategy

Well that was fast. At least they don’t have to refund that many people. 😅

This is one of those Schadenfreude moments, I said it before and keep saying it, this game is the one of the main reasons as to why sony decided to cancel many unannounced live service games.

As to why decided to shut it down, one of two; exactly the same as with FF14, and they want to return later with a more compelling experience, or it is better for them to end it now instead of keep expending money in a lost cause.

Super fast. There was this one game that shutdown the day of release or the day after. I can't remember what it was but it looked like an asset flip and a clone of The Division.

With that said, I hope they repurpose all of the assets created and make a single player game. It would be shame to spent all that time on making the game only to trash everything.

@sargentd: The Steam numbers didn't really matter much to me since this was a PS game made and marketed by PS, I always thought the majority of the player base would be on PS5, but yeah with all that said still terrible numbers for a new game release.

@Pedro: Yeah, I’m thinking that they’ll do some kind of retooling or whatever with it and probably bring it back as some kind of free to play game. Likely unsure of what kind of timeline they’ll have for that so just best to refund people and take it offline for now.

Ouch. 8 years in the oven and 200million bucks production cost....that's going to sting.

The GAAS shooter market is a very red ocean. You can make a perfectly fine game, but if it's not doing something really interesting then it's in trouble. Helldivers 2 was a big hit but Sony also don't seem to be able to keep the momentum going (and the whole post launch PSN thing soured things on the PC side: Not helpful).

Hard to say what Sony should do here though. On the one hand they kinda need to get a sustained hit in the GAAS market. They need it to help sustain their production budgets. It's a colossal market in terms of revenue. But they are really not very good at it.

Maybe see if they can buy Everquest back :P.

The Harry Potter Quidditch game just released today and the character customization has pronoun options. The default pronoun is set to "they/them" lol let's see if that game gets knocked and takes a hit for it to test your theory.

yeah you did.

in the background. just waiting till some one else said it first!

From what we have seen, this has been all apart of PlayStation's PC push. Helldivers 2, Concord, Fairgame$, etc all being day one on PC and GaaS, which is bigger on PC than it is on console. Many were surprised that the first guesstimates were 15K on PS and 10K on PC. It should have been the other way around.

I think the game wouldve been far better as a Destiny-style live service rather than a hero shooter.

At least then the story cinematics would actually make sense.

Guardians of the goyslop!!!

Is this the fastest a game has been shut down? Cause this is wild 😂

Well unless the Harry Potter game decides to remove all white characters and makes you play as ugly characters it's not really an apples to apples comparison. 🤣

Keep ignoring the elephant in the room though.

Concord removed white people from the game?🤔

I hope they can relaunch it in a better state.

Like West Virginia or Montana?

@Pedro said:

@silentchief said:

@mysticaldonut said:

The Harry Potter Quidditch game just released today and the character customization has pronoun options. The default pronoun is set to "they/them" lol let's see if that game gets knocked and takes a hit for it to test your theory.

Well unless the Harry Potter game decides to remove all white characters it's not really an apples to apples comparison. 🤣

Keep ignoring the elephant in the room though.

Concord removed white people from the game?🤔

The fact you posted a picture of a guy named Teo with a thick Latino accent and called him white is the ultimate self own 🤣

A 16 character roster and not a single white guy. Way to know your audience. They didn't remove white dudes they just never put them in.

I'm sure 500 people who bought the game appreciate the representation though.

And gone....

Thoughts @SolidGame_basic, @hardwenzen ?

This reminds me of that scene from Ran where Hidetora leaves the burning castle mad and everyone just watches on in awe as he fucks off into desert.

Except funnier.

i blame Game Pass, poor console sales, and the ABK deal..

You won't go as far as to blame Phil though....says a lot.

oh sorry, clearly Phil Spencer and the Series S are to blame as well..

By my most optimistic estimates I gave it a year, Sony gotta go exceeding my expectations like they always do.