Concord is going offline beginning September 6th
An important update on Concord
Update: players are now throwing themselves off cliffs to grind xp for the platinum trophy https://x.com/realradec/status/1831041419756388429
I feel like short of making it free to play and having a complete art style rework this game doesn't have great hopes of ever being relevant. I mean from what I've gathered the gameplay itself is decent to good. But yeah they just misfired so hard with this.
Despite it all, I feel bad for the majority of devs who spent so much of their life working on this and who are likely going to be out of a job. Of course I don't know anything about the inner workings, but I'd be willing to bet it's not most of their fault's that sony had been pushing so hard for live service stuff under their former leadership
I do not think this will go F2P at some point in the near future.
If you spend 8 years and 200 million + dollars on something that you expect to ... you know, at the very least, recoup that cost... and it doesn't even make a fraction of a percent of that?
At that point, someone with some modicum of business sense is likely to realize they've been chasing the sunk cost fallacy for almost a decade and that throwing even more time and money at this to develop it even more probably is completely insane, as its already shown that nobody wants this product.
I think its more likely this will be totally scrapped barring a few assets and code snippets that might be cannibalized into other projects.
This whole thing is an utter disaster from a branding perspective, if the core gameplay systems later emerge in some other game, its going to have nothing to do with the whole grand expanded universe they've envisioned and promoted as being a huge draw to this game.
As for the devs, sure I feel bad for them in theory, but it doesn't help that you've got at least one that calls everyone criticising the game a 'talentless freak' and then having a twitter meltdown in response to a person saying basically: wow I'm sorry this game didn't do so well on launch, it looks like a lot of time and effort was put into it.
The whole 'feel bad for the devs, they did a good job, it was management that fucked everything' is seriously undercut when you basically express that opinion to a dev and they act like a 14 year old responding to people that don't like their Deviant Art OC.
It's def not a great look but it's also only 1 former dev. I'm not going to judge the whole team on the words of 1 person who isn't working there anymore
This is the problem with spending millions of dollars on games and focusing on profitability over actual quality or expression. Video games are fundamentally an art medium. You can choose to make some uninspired cash grabbing trash, and can even make a whole company built around that and make profit. But are you going to make a great game that way? Probably not.
You'd be better off with half a dozen people with passion and a comparatively minuscule budget. You might have to scale back from ultra realistic graphics and massive explorable areas with dozens of voice actors, but I don't really think that makes games any better anyway. A little 2d rpg with really basic pixel graphics can put a big project to shame if it's made with passion and emotion.
Just read the article, id hardly call that a "meltdown" lol. Sure, it was unprofessional, but it wasn't a rant. This article feels like it's trying to spin a narrative that doesn't exist.
The post in question.
eh, i don't really care. it was a huge labour of love from a lot of insanely talented people making an awesome game. why would i care about a bunch of talentless freaks hating on it? i'm sure having fun playing it, and i wouldn't trade it for anything.
Note that this is the only post they're talking about. It wasn't like a drawn out thread with name calling.
Again, not saying it's professional, but calling this a meltdown? Come on now... Y'all are being ridiculous. This is like the tamest fucking tweet.
I think that's common in gaming development. You work on a project until it's done, then pivot to another or get let go.
The game bombing likely doesn't help but I expect most devs involved expected this. Apparently development ran 3-4 years, which is a good time to leave a job in tech generally, if not earlier if you want to maximize income.
I heard the project had been in production for 10 years and in development for 8
they still got paid and made stuff for their portfolio, while executives get to explain why there is a hundred million missing and entire studios worth of manhours in the void
Normally it works exactly backwards to this in larger studios/publishers.
Game devs do backbreaking, insanity inducing levels of work, and all but 10% are laid off when the game launches, regardless of success or failure, and for this time they are making probably about area median wage, maybe 10 or 20% more.
Its the middle managers and higher up executives who make multiples to orders of magnitude that amount of money, and almost all of them are rewarded by either failing upward or bailing out with golden parachutes, even though its often their decisions and directions, often going against lower level devs, which lead to the ultimate commercial failure.
Perhaps this loss will be so serious that some higher ups will actually get axxed, but even then it hardly matters: They can easily retire on what they've earned so far, whereas the actual people writing code, making maps, making art assets, they'll basically all be homeless if they don't find another decent job in 3 to 6 months.
Make it F2P but charge for cosmetics that completely rework the art style. Almost all the characters look insufferable and I particularly want to punch Lennox in the face every time I see him.
Don't feel bad for them. Firewalk Studios may only have Concord to it's name, but the Devs are all from Bungie and Activision. That should already ring some alarm bells.
They knew exactly what they were doing. They are the ones that sold the idea of Concord to Sony. For once I doubt Sony had to push for any of the bad decisions.
They didn't waste $100 mill+ and 8 years development time on a random passion project. This was designed for a single reason, to make money in ridiculous amounts. To squeeze every penny out of kids and their parents.
I can't feel bad for anyone that worked on something like that when it fails.
I never saw a launched game unlaunch this quick. We talked about failures that got shutdown 1 year after launch. But now the record is what, 2 weeks? Question is, will they go back to drawing board and make changes to the game for a relaunch, such as a free to play model? Nothing is stated here, so probably not.
I would consider playing this game, if it was playable on Linux (and without a PSN account requirement). But clearly Sony does not care about me.
I think the record still goes to Amazon's Crucible, which was cancelled before release after a closed-beta that nobody played.
I actually liked that game. Sure, it was unpolished and unoptimized. But there were still some fun to be had. It feels like they gave up on that game within a week or two.
"Nobody" probably isn't literal here, but I imagine some manager scheduling a meeting where they want a report on the game's performance and feedback during the beta. Some higher up is going to sit in for the first few minutes for the KPI summary.
The sweating analyst jokes about the heat in the room, the higher up dryly remarks that the AC seems to be working just fine. The presentation starts, the analyst grasping for some more weasel words and void sentences to stall with before finally switching to the second slide, captioned "Player count". It's a big, fat 0.
They stammer their way through half a sentence of trying to describe this zero, then fall silent, staring at their shoes. The game dev lead has a thousand yard stare. The product owner is trying to maintain composure.
The uncomfortable silence is finally broken by the manager, getting up to leave: "I think we're done here." There is an odd sense of foreboding, that "here" might not just mean the meeting. The analyst silently proceeds to the next slide, showing the current player count over time in a line chart.
This would be a perfect spot to advertise that EU petition. There must've been at least 1 person who liked the game and now can't play anymore.
They get a refund and it has been only 2 weeks out. The situation is vastly different from the EU petition that is going on.
As much as I'd like to see this game preserved, I don't think the dev can be held responsible when they're refunding everyone who purchased the game.
I am fairly, but not 100% certain, that Ross Scott's proposal currently making the rounds in the EU would say that you either have to refund a game (and all in game purchases) when it becomes totally unplayable, or you have to release some kind of way for dedicated fans to be able to least run custom servers and bypass no longer maintained, proprietary, always online verification/anti cheat schtuff.
Concord will be back as a F2P, guarantee it. They've got Amazon churning out an episode of their Secret Level series for the game, they're not going to fully kill it here and now.
The feedback that I heard everywhere was that the game should have been F2P, so they'll make that happen.
I will bet you $0.02 that they will absolutely pull the plug on that episode, that they will indeed fully kill it here and now, and that it will not be reworked into a F2P game with the same characters or art style ever.
Maybe they will take some of the core gameplay mechanics and work them into projects totally unrelated to the 'Concord IP' they spent so much time hyping, but I see 0 chance that Concord just relaunches as Concord F2P in 6 months.
Wow, this is absolutely wild. From launch to delisting in two weeks. Yeah, there's a good chance that this is temporary while they pivot to a free-to-play model, but holy crap. Guess the PS5 player count must not be substantially higher than the abysmal Steam player count.
The estimates I've seen from people going off of PS achievements for the game put total PS sales at about 15,000 compared to about 10,000 on Steam.
So that would equate to roughly an all time PSN concurrent player count high of 1,000.
Stop making live service games and "shared world" faux-mmos. If it's not single player, P2P multiplayer, or providing the server executable for me to host, I'm not buying it. There are already enough good MMOs anyways.
Some of the best FPS games are live service games but it's because they're great games at their core. Plenty of companies are focusing on making live service games instead of games so good that they become live services.
I loved the first Division game. It had a great community, great gunplay, and prior to the crafting nerf(s) a really good loot/crafting feedback loop. But it could have just as easily been made as a local co-op or self-hosted game. I have yet to encounter a game that can only exist as a live service game, unlike e.g. Eve Online which can only exist as an MMO.
It sounds like you've already got a curated list of games - what are a few standout multiplayer that you enjoy that meet your criteria?
I'll start off - when knockout city, an excellent dodgeball "shooter" closed shop, the devs released the server hosting code so the community could still play
Multiplayer games that I love, that I can self-host or play P2P?
Project Zomboid, ARK, Grim Dawn, Starbound, Space Engineers, Satisfactory, and Bellwright
I would have included Minecraft Java, but MS went and made it online only recently, where you can't play at all without signing into their launcher, even singleplayer.
It fully released August 23rd. Beta started in July
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. If you purchased the game for PlayStation 5 from the PlayStation Store or PlayStation Direct, a refund will be issued back to your original payment method.
Customers who purchased from other digital storefronts will also be refunded.
The Day Before was playable from release on Dec 7th until the servers were shutdown on Jan 22nd.
47 playable days.
All time steam peak player count: 38,104.
Total Development Time: Approximately 3 Years, likely closer to 4.
...
Concord was playable on release on August 23rd, and will shut down on September 6th.
15 playable days.
All time steam peak total player count (after release): 697.
Total Development Time: Approximately 8 Years.
...
Fucking amazing. At least they're refunding it.
697? Geez that's... Not great.
Stop making live service games, especially when you have no fucking clue where your audience is
Released: August 23rd, 2024.
Shutting down: September 6th, 2024.
Speedrun strats?
WR Tax-Writeoff% no OOB
Can someone preserve this piece of shit? The internet has enough lost media to scramble after
This is probably a new record
Concorde, isn't that a car?
I know one person IRL who is cresfallen by this news. I don't know much about this gaming though, how come it never caught on?
It missed several boats and came out with a sticker price when most of the other games in the same market are free to play
It also released 2 weeks ago, so I can see why they’d be disappointed! It’s apparently a decently fun game and getting support pulled so quickly would be sad
Plus it didn't help that one out of the two systems (PS5) requires a paid online subscription
