Sony and Firewalk Studios have announced the shutdown of its recently released ultra-woke game, Concord, less than two weeks after its launch, offering full refunds to all players who purchased the game for PS5 or PC. Sony invested an estimated $100 to $200 million in the game, proving once again that when companies go woke, they go broke.
That Park Place reports that Firewalk Studios Game Director Ryan Ellis revealed the decision to take Concord offline in a blog post on September 3, 2024. Ellis stated, “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.” He also announced that the company would cease sales of the game immediately and begin offering full refunds to all gamers who purchased Concord for PlayStation 5 or PC.
Concord, a multiplayer game in the same vein as Overwatch, faced criticism and negative feedback from the moment it was announced. Many players expressed displeasure with the game’s design choices and the inclusion of pronouns for characters, which some viewed as the promotion of transgender ideology. Despite these concerns, Firewalk Studios chose to ignore the feedback, with Director of IP Kim Kreines stating in an interview with VGC that the trailer was just a “tiny slice” of the game and that players would eventually fall in love with the depth of the characters and their unfolding personalities and backstories.
The game’s performance metrics painted a bleak picture from the start. During its Early Access phase on Steam, Concord only managed to reach a peak concurrent player count of 1,124. The Open Beta saw a slight improvement, with a peak of 2,388 concurrent players. However, reports from True Trophies indicated that player counts on PlayStation had declined by 8.1 percent between the Early Access and Open Beta periods.
Upon its official release on August 23, Concord’s peak concurrent player count on Steam plummeted to just 697, with the past 24 hours seeing a peak of only 110 players. The game fared no better on PlayStation, with PSNProfiles reporting that out of the 1,303 individuals who owned the game, only 1,264 had achieved the most common trophy, “First Takedown,” which requires players to get their first elimination or kill.
Concord’s rapid decline in popularity was further evidenced by its position on True Trophies’ weekly chart of the most popular PlayStation games. During its Early Access and Open Beta phases, the game ranked 29th. However, upon release, it dropped to 147th in its first week and fell even further to 180th in its second week.
Read more at That Park Place here.
Lucas Nolan is a reporter for Breitbart News covering issues of free speech and online censorship.
