I Can’t Remember The Last Time I Saw A Game Fail As Hard As Concord

Concord, the latest hero shooter to join the band of modern-day live service games, has recently launched to an exceptionally disappointing reception, one that surely must have made Sony execs rethink their decisions for the better. Now, that’s not even half of it.

I put together this piece to talk about just how bad it really is, considering how recent failures don’t even come close to what Concord has been able to accomplish on that front. Let’s dive into the matter at hand, and try to make sense of what happened, how it happened, and why it can be avoided down the road. 

Massively Underwhelming Launch Reception

The writing has been on the wall ever since Concord’s beta kicked off in July, gathering a peak concurrent player count of 2,388 users, and then declining soon afterward. But no, I’d rather say that things started looking bad for Concord the day it was officially revealed. Players came together in droves to hate on it, uttering all sorts of negative feedback, including, 

This is what happens when you ask ChatGPT to make a hero shooter.”

All right, so all of this happened back in July, so here’s when the last straw came striking down hard. Concord was released on August 23, 2024, and went on to accumulate even fewer players than its beta. Hold that thought for a minute. It’s just said at this point, really. 

The shooter on PC peaked at 697 players after launching, hitting not even 1000 players, which shouldn’t be the bare minimum for a game whose central focus revolves around the live service format. Within a week of this disappointing occurrence, Concord managed to lose 80% of that peak CCU figure as well. That’s just like kicking down on a dead horse at this point.

Although Firewalk has an entire roadmap plan laid out for the game that has the shooter receiving content for it till January and beyond, I doubt the game’s going to stick around for a long time, because no one is essentially playing it. Heck, I remember Foamstars putting up a better show than this and take it from me, that one wasn’t anywhere near a good time either.

But then there’s Redfall, boasting more than 6,000 players on launch, and even Payday 3 — a major disappointment — which was released to well over 75,000 users. 

Eventually, I do think Concord will meet a fate similar to the latter, where it’ll be transitioned to a free-to-play model.

Declining Sales Within A Week Of Release

Let’s put the player numbers aside for a minute. What about sales? According to a thorough report by IGN, Concord has sold no more than 25,000 copies within a week of release approximately. As a Sony-published, first-party game, these numbers are downright abysmal, and a clear depiction of how negatively alluring the live service business model can be and that chasing trends can backfire dramatically.   

The FPS GaaS market has reached a saturation point, and only a breakthrough in some manner could have a good chance of standing out in this massively overcrowded space. 

Anyhow, Concord’s player numbers on PlayStation, but analysts say that even without a clear estimate, it’s safe to say that the game is doing quite poorly for Sony. It also bears mentioning here that this game was about 8 years in development. The time and financial investment is anything but trivial.  

Is Concord Really A Bad Game, Per Se? 

Now this here is one particular facet that gives me mixed feelings about Firewalks’ debut shooter, a lot of them. Tell you what, Concord is not even half-bad, meaning that despite sporting a GaaS business model, it’s a capable hero shooter in the fairly saturated market of live service shooters. The gameplay is well-produced, but it goes without saying that there are quite a few factors attributing to the massive failure of the game. 

One of them is the pricing. Concord’s competition includes Overwatch 2, Fortnite, The Finals, Apex Legends, Valorant, and others, all of which are free-to-play. Concord, on the other hand, costs $40. What kind of a picture does that paint? 

Another is the lack of substantial marketing because Concord has to go up against games with pre-existing fanbases, whereas this one had none of that. The absence of ample player intent has been clear since day one, given the way Sony showed the game off to its players who have grown used to story-driven experiences instead.

Combine this point with uninteresting character design and the recipe for disaster is pretty much on point. 

If anything, Concord is a genuine example of a live service game gone horribly wrong. Hopefully, it serves as a lesson to developers in the future who would think about delving into this space.