Concord is an example of a failed live service game. Many hated it because it was overpriced and failed to innovate to differ from other free-to-play games.
Firewalk Studios, the developer of Concord, was founded in 2018 and is located in Bellevue, Washington. They developed Concord alone until Sony bought the company in April 2023. Sony announced it on the Playstation showcase trailer one month after the acquisition.
When Helldivers 2 was released, many people loved it and it surpassed over 400,000 player counts. This got Sony excited, and they hoped the Concord release would be the same as the Helldivers 2 release. When the Beta was released, not many people played it, which spelled trouble for Sony.
When it was released, very few players picked up the game. Steam records showed that the game failed to even break 700 users, and the PlayStation charts failed to break 1,500 users. Most of the game’s characters were forgettable. One week after the launch, the PlayStation store put Concord in 40th place among releases, and only 162 players were playing Concord on Steam.
The criticisms ranged from lack of innovation to forgettable characters to outdated and overpriced at 40 bucks a copy. Many article magazines called it the biggest flop in video game history.
On September 3, Sony announced the shutdown of Concord, with players who owned the physical copy getting refunded. On September 6, the game’s servers were officially shut down. Only 25,000 copies of the game were sold, with Steam selling 10,000 copies and Playstation selling 15,000 copies. The game cost over 400 million dollars and was a big loss to the company.