Firewalk Studios Closed
Firewalk’s closure marks the top of an ignominious chapter for Sony, that noticed the corporate launch Concord on August 23 to the sound of crickets. The $40 hero-shooter failed to search out an viewers in a aggressive style stuffed with free-to-play choices, peaking out at a dismal 697 concurrent gamers on Steam earlier than it was scrubbed from PlayStation and PC storefronts and brought offline lower than two weeks after launch.
“We have spent appreciable time these previous few months exploring all our choices,” Hermen Hulst, CEO of Studio Business Group at SIE, mentioned in an internal email to workers. “After a lot thought, we now have decided the very best path ahead is to completely sundown the sport and shut the studio.”
Hulst mentioned sure facets of Concord didn’t attraction to sufficient gamers, regardless of a few of its “distinctive” qualities. “The PvP first individual shooter style is a aggressive house that is repeatedly evolving, and sadly, we didn’t hit our targets with this title. We will take the teachings realized from Concord and proceed to advance our dwell service capabilities to ship future progress on this space.”
In an X (previously Twitter) submit Tuesday, Firewalk Studios signed off one final time, hailing its improvement workforce as “really world-class”.
“We took some dangers alongside the way in which – marrying facets of card battlers and preventing video games with first-person-shooters – and though a few of these and different facets of the IP did not land as we hoped, the concept of placing new issues into the world is important to pushing the medium ahead,” the studio mentioned within the submit.
Firewalk is signing off one final time.
Firewalk started with the concept of bringing the enjoyment of multiplayer to a bigger viewers. Along the way in which we assembled an unimaginable workforce who have been capable of:
– Navigate rising a brand new startup right into a workforce throughout a world pandemic: Firewalk was…— Firewalk (@FirewalkStudios) October 29, 2024
Sony mentioned the choice to close each Firewalk and Neon Koi was given critical thought and was finally the fitting one to “strengthen the group”. The firm additionally mentioned it could work to put laid off workers from each builders inside its world portfolio of sport studios the place potential.
Concord Failure
Firewalk Studios was fashioned in 2018 as part of ProbablyMonsters, headed by Bungie veterans. Sony acquired the developer in April 2023 and reportedly pumped over $200 million into its first sport, Concord. Industry insiders have claimed that the shooter, which Sony acquired as a part of its live-service push, value a reported $400 million to make and consequently represents Sony’s largest loss ever on a sport.
A retro-futuristic sci-fi hero-shooter with an art-style and witty banter that resembled Guardians of the Galaxy, Concord launched on August 23 at a $40 price ticket. The sport was virtually lifeless on arrival, with an estimated 10,000 copies offered on Steam and round 15,000 on PlayStation Store.
Double-digit concurrent participant counts led to Sony taking the sport offline on September 6 and issuing refunds to all gamers who had bought the sport. At the time, the corporate mentioned it could “discover choices,” which led some to consider that Concord may return in a unique kind, maybe as a free-to-play title or on Sony’s sport subscription service, PlayStation Plus.
In our evaluate of Concord, we mentioned the sport was a “serviceable first-person hero-shooter, very a lot within the vein of Overwatch” that failed to differentiate itself in a crowded area in significant methods.
