5v5 shooter Concord is set to be discontinued indefinitely this Friday (just two weeks after its launch on PS5 and PC) with Sony and Firewalk Studios admitting that “our initial launch fell through.”
Concord, one of several games acquired by Sony as part of its live service push under former PlayStation boss Jim Ryan, was initially announced last May. Since then, the response has been lukewarm, culminating in less-than-stellar player numbers at launch, and later estimates that only around 25,000 copies were sold across PS5 and PC.
And now, Sony is making the remarkable decision to pull the game from the Internet this Friday, September 6. In a post announcing the news on the PlayStation BlogGame director Ryan Ellis wrote: “While many qualities of the experience resonated with players, we also recognize that other aspects of the game and our initial launch were not as successful as we had hoped.”
As such, Concord will be taken offline so Firewalk can “determine the best path forward” and “explore options, including those that will best resonate with our players.”
Additionally, Concord will be discontinued immediately, and all players who purchased the game for PlayStation 5 on PC will receive a full refund. Those who purchased Concord from the PlayStation Store or PlayStation Direct will receive a refund via their original payment method. Sony says these refunds can take 30-60 days to appear on buyers' bank statements.
Steam and Epic customers will be refunded in the “coming days” and will receive confirmation that the refund has been processed. As for players who purchased a physical copy of Concord, they are advised to check their retailer’s refund process. All players, Sony notes, will lose access to the game once they receive the refund.
“We will keep you informed,” Firewalk's statement concludes, “and thanks again to all the Freegunners who have joined us in the Concord galaxy.”
Writing about the low-key launch of the “amiable and heartfelt” Concord last month, Eurogamer's Chris Tapsell said: “He steps out of the development trenches and into no man's land, grabbing his gun and his special ability, hoping for the best and preparing for what is probably the inevitable, as the eternal war for our attention rages on.”