Sony has announced plans to take new live service shooter Concord offline, pull the game from sale and offer refunds to all players who bought it.
The news follows reports that the PS5 and PC game may have sold as few as 25,000 copies across both platforms since its release on August 23.
The announcement was made in a PlayStation Blog post by Ryan Ellis, game director at Sony’s Firewalk Studios.
“Concord fans — we’ve been listening closely to your feedback since the launch of Concord on PlayStation 5 and PC and want to thank everyone who has joined the journey aboard the Northstar. Your support and the passionate community that has grown around the game has meant the world to us,” he said.
“However, while many qualities of the experience resonated with players, we also recognize that other aspects of the game and our initial launch didn’t land the way we’d intended. Therefore, 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.
“While we determine the best path ahead, Concord sales will cease immediately and we will begin to offer a full refund for all gamers who have purchased the game for PS5 or PC.”
Once refunded, players will no longer have access to the game, which cost $40 / £35.
PS5 players who bought the game from the PlayStation Store or PlayStation Direct will receive a refund to their original payment method, although Sony said this may take 30-60 days to appear on bank statements.
“For customers who have purchased a physical copy at a retailer location outside of PlayStation directly, please refer to the refund process of the retailer you purchased it from to obtain your refund,” Ellis said.
PC players who purchased the game through Steam and the Epic Games Store will be refunded “over the coming days”, he added.
Washington-based Firewalk was founded in 2018 and was acquired by Sony last year. Concord, its debut game, was reportedly in development for around eight years.
The title received “mixed or average” reviews from critics, according to review aggregation website Metacritic, where it has scores of 62 (PS5) and (65 PC). At the time of publication, Concord has just 34 players in-game on Steam, according to SteamDB.
VGC’s Concord review called it “a good shooter divorced from the reality of its genre.”
We wrote: “Concord is a good shooter built on a release strategy and price point that would have been far more at home in 2017, and feels dated today. The game – which is a multiplayer-only, live-service hero shooter – does provide fun, but even at its best, we never felt strongly enough about it that we’d tell someone with three or four other live-service games on the go to drop what they’re doing, pay $40 and jump on.”
Concord’s performance represents a major setback for PlayStation’s live service ambitions. Sony said last November that it was halving the number of live service games it planned to release over the next few years in a bid to ensure they met quality expectations.
The following month, Naughty Dog confirmed that Sony had cancelled plans to release The Last of Us Online following several years in development.
