The cost of Concord(ia).
Mere months after Concord‘s short-lived run, Sony has made the decision to close down Firewalk Studios. The news was first broken by Bloomberg.
Sony acquired Firewalk back in 2023, and almost everything clearly banked on Concord being a big success. Reportedly, director Ryan Ellis left the company shortly after Concord was taken offline.
Sony Interactive Entertainment posted an email publicly to the SIE blog, featuring a statement by Studio Business Group CEO Hermen Hulst on the closure. The email also covers the fact that Sony made a similar decision in regard to German studio Neon Koi, which was making a mobile action game for Sony.
Dear Team,
Today, I want to share some important updates from Sony Interactive Entertainment’s Studio Business Group.
We consistently evaluate our games portfolio and status of our projects to ensure we are meeting near and long-term business priorities. As part of our ongoing efforts to strengthen SIE’s Studio Business, we have had to make a difficult decision relating to two of our studios – Neon Koi and Firewalk Studios.
Expanding beyond PlayStation devices and crafting engaging online experiences alongside our single-player games are key focal areas for us as we evolve our revenue streams. We need to be strategic, though, in bringing our games to new platforms and recognize when our games fall short of meeting player expectations.
While mobile remains a priority growth area for the Studio Business, we are in the very early stage of our mobile efforts. To achieve success in this area we need to concentrate on titles that are in-line with PlayStation Studios’ pedigree and have the potential to reach more players globally.
With this re-focused approach, Neon Koi will close, and its mobile action game will not be moving forward. I want to express my gratitude to everyone at Neon Koi for their hard work and endless passion to innovate.
Regarding Firewalk, as announced in early September (An Important Update on Concord), certain aspects of Concord were exceptional, but others did not land with enough players, and as a result we took the game offline. We have spent considerable time these past few months exploring all our options.
After much thought, we have determined the best path forward is to permanently sunset the game and close the studio. I want to thank all of Firewalk for their craftsmanship, creative spirit and dedication.
The PvP first person shooter genre is a competitive space that’s continuously evolving, and unfortunately, we did not hit our targets with this title. We will take the lessons learned from Concord and continue to advance our live service capabilities to deliver future growth in this area.
I know none of this is easy news to hear, particularly with colleagues and friends departing SIE. Both decisions were given serious thought, and ultimately, we feel they are the right ones to strengthen the organization. Neon Koi and Firewalk were home to many talented individuals, and we will work to find placement for some of those impacted within our global community of studios where possible.
I am a big believer in the benefits of embracing creative experimentation and developing new IP. However, growing through sustainable financials, especially in a challenged economic environment is critical.
While today is a difficult day, there is much to look forward to in the months ahead from the Studio Business Group and our teams. I remain confident that we are building a resilient and capable organization driven by creating unforgettable entertainment experiences for our players.
Thank you for your continued support.
Hermen Hulst, CEO, Studio Business Group, Sony Interactive Entertainment
For what it’s worth, Firewalk Studios authored a farewell over on Xitter.
Firewalk is signing off one last time. Firewalk began with the idea of bringing the joy of multiplayer to a larger audience. Along the way we assembled an incredible team who were able to:
– Navigate growing a new startup into a team during a global pandemic: Firewalk was founded in 2018 and was very small for its first couple years, only entering full Production in 2022.
– Build a new, customized next-generation FPS engine in Unreal 4 -> 5, delivering top-tier gameplay feel, beautiful worlds, and a performant 60fps technical experience on a stable and scalable backend on PS5 and PC to hundreds of thousands of players in our beta.
– Manage an acquisition / integration while readying technical and preliminary tests.
– And ultimately ship and deliver a great FPS experience to players- even if it landed much more narrowly than hoped against a heavily consolidated market.
We took some risks along the way – marrying aspects of card battlers and fighting games with first-person-shooters – and although some of these and other aspects of the IP didn’t land as we hoped, the idea of putting new things into the world is critical to pushing the medium forward.
The talent at Firewalk and the level of individual craft is truly world-class, and teams within Sony Interactive Entertainment and across the industry will be fortunate to work with them. Please reach out to Recruiting at PlayStation for inquiries, and thank you to all the very many teams, partners and fans who supported us along the way.
See you in the Tempest.
– Firewalk Studios
…
[end transmission]
You might, however, be able to guess what some of the responses in that thread are like.
Concord underwent a roughly 8 year development cycle, starting around the point that Overwatch became big, and launching after Overwatch 2 had seen to the departure of a large number of their peak-era players. Notably, Hero Shooters as a genre became particularly crowded during those 8 years, meaning that the barrier for success had become quite high.
There was some buzz that Concord might see a bit of retooling and relaunch as a free-to-play game, but with Firewalk’s closure, that may be a pipe dream at this point.
It is telling, however, that in a year of layoffs and failures for the industry, the failure of Concord has perhaps been the biggest albatross around anyone’s neck. Which is saying something, as Ubisoft massively overspent on their AAAA pirate game.
Source: IGN
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