Sony Shuts Down Firewalk Studios After Concord Flops On PlayStation And PC

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Firewalk Studios, makers of the ill-fated first-person shooter Concord, has been shut down by Sony after the game was taken offline mere weeks after launching on PlayStation 5 and PC. The announcement of the closure was made by CEO of the Studio Business Group at Sony Interactive Entertainment, Hermen Hulst, in an internal e-mail to employees that was later released to the public.

In the e-mail, Hulst says that Sony “spent considerable time these past few months exploring all our options.” However, it seems that after pulling the game from digital storefronts in an effort to salvage the situation, “the best path forward is to permanently sunset the game and close the studio.” It’s a shocking turn of events after more than $200 million were spent to make Concord, according to a report in Kotaku.

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While Concord undoubtedly failed to find its place in the crowded live service games market, Firewalk Studios took to LinkedIn to post about some of its accomplishments in its journey to get the game out the door. These include “navigat[ing] growing a new startup into a team during a global pandemic; build a new, customized next-generation FPS engine in Unreal 4 -> 5, and a performant 60fps technical experience” on PlayStation 5 and PC.

However, it appears as if this disastrous experience isn’t going to change Sony’s plans regarding the development of more online service games, as the idea of Fortnite-like profits are too irresistible. Hulst said that the company will “will take the lessons learned from Concord and continue to advance our live service capabilities to deliver future growth in this area.”

Time will tell what kind of “lessons” the team at Sony were able to learn from this failure. Hopefully, it leads to something more sustainable for itself and its development studios.