Concordhasshut its virtual doorsand the dozens of players who logged in to compete in Sony’s 5v5 hero shooter are being given full refunds. This is happening just three weeks after the game’s initial release in a move completely unprecedented in the industry.
The only comparable failure is that ofCyberpunk 2077, which wasremoved from last-gen stores due to its visual and performance woes. While its most egregious bugs were fixed, CD Projekt Red’s sci-fi RPG is still in a poor state on last-gen consoles.
Concord may return. Sony and developer Firewalk Studios acknowledged that the game performed poorly at launch, and want to try again.I suspect it will return as a free-to-play iteration of the live-service model, seeing as the Helldivers 2 premium price point didn’t work out. However, the game could do with a bit more marketing the second time around, as one poorly received reveal trailer clearly wasn’t enough to pierce the public consciousness.
Considering Sony’s apparent focus on creating 12 live-service games (since scaled back to ‘just’ six) in the coming years, you’d have thought it would have an idea of how to market them. Sure, not every game is guaranteed a stellar launch, but lots of thought needs to go into making a splash when your game needs thousands of players in order to function correctly (as opposed to a single-player game where it would still be considered a commercial failure with a three-figure player count, but at least it would be playable). When you’re trying to pull players away from industry titans like Counter-Strike and Valorant, it’s even more important.
Whether Concord was a failure of gameplay, marketing, or both, its upcoming appearance in Amazon’s Secret Level is going to feel really strange in the wake of the game it’s based on shutting up shop.
Secret Levelis an upcoming animated anthology series based on video games, from the creators of the excellent Love, Death, and Robots. Each episode focuses on a different video game and tells a story set in that world. Most are massive properties looking to extend their reach, like God of War, Dungeons & Dragons, and Honor of Kings. Some are beloved classics, like Pac-Man and Mega Man, and Amazon’s own game New World: Aeternum obviously gets its time in the spotlight.
I’m most excited for the Armored Core episode. Mechs are love, mechs are life. Not to mention that Keanu Reeves is set to make an appearance.
Alongside these are some niche picks. An episode based on The Outer Worlds will be interesting, and Unreal Tournament, Spelunky, and Sifu are left field choices that excite the mind. Then there’s the final category: games that feel they’re in there for marketing. This category includes live-service title Crossfire, the recent release Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine 2, and, of course, Concord.
These are games that need players, need retention, and are trying to break into a saturated market. A multimedia approach to marketing is a savvy move, but it’s coming too late for Concord. I highly doubt the game will be fixed and rereleased by the time Secret Level hits our screens in December. What once may have been a coordinated marketing push is now a waste of Sony’s cash.
People who watch the Concord episode will excitedly look up the game it’s based on, a game they hadn’t heard of because it made so little splash in the live-service oceans it would barely be considered a ripple. Would they find a flawed game with few players? Worse, they’d find nothing other than thinkpieces about why the game failed.
For those of us aware of Concord and its catastrophic failure, it will be even worse. Watching the episode will be bittersweet. I’m sure the episode will be good because of the pedigree of the creative minds behind it, but I’ll struggle to watch it without thinking of this whole situation. Without thinking of the devs inevitably crunching to improve an executive’s flawed vision. Without thinking of the game that could have been made without Sony’s misguided pivot to live-service.
I hope Concord returns, and I hope it smashes it. I’m not hopeful, but you never know. Cyberpunk 2077 made a surprising comeback, so why can’t Concord? It’ll need a lot of work and a lot more than an animated show to market it, but there’s a slim chance that the devs’ hard work won’t go to waste. Until then, we’ll have to suffer through an awkward episode of Secret Level while the devs break their backs to showcase their game’s full potential.
