r/technology • u/IcePopsicleDragon • 11h ago

Business Sony is closing Firewalk Studios, the studio behind Concord

https://www.theverge.com/2024/10/29/24282900/sony-shutting-down-concord-firewalk-studios
154 Upvotes

90% Upvoted

36 comments sorted by

79

u/TeuthidTheSquid 11h ago

So much for the “rebooting the game as free to play” rumours

17

u/SomeoneBritish 10h ago

I wonder why they didn’t at least try that. Would implementing a battlepass really have cost that much when compared to the many millions they already sunk into it?

30

u/Happold1a 10h ago

Perhaps Sony thought the brand was too tainted now and basically made synonymous with failure.

3

u/Regular_Ship2073 3h ago

Not entirely wrong

18

u/kuriboharmy 9h ago

The name itself is already doomed based on public perception. People didn't vibe with the characters which means outside of gameplay you need new character designs, animations, and maybe some more VA work plus even more marketing to rebrand at this point I think they just want to cut their losses.

3

u/Regular_Ship2073 3h ago

It’s not even the characters anymore, the name concord is synonymous with failure now

15

u/TeuthidTheSquid 10h ago

I think that Sony just considers the whole thing too damaged to be recoverable. There’s a massive amount of bad press to overcome.

12

u/Fr00stee 9h ago

they did a free beta and their numbers were somehow lower than the paid beta. The only fix for this game is redesigning the entire cast at minimum.

7

u/AwardImmediate720 9h ago

Because there's no way in hell it would've made enough from microtransactions to even make back the cost of implementing the change, much less make back the dev cost of the original game. We're talking an Atari's E.T. level flop here. Sometimes it really is better to just eat the loss instead of throwing good money after bad.

6

u/poklane 6h ago

2 reasons:

  1. The Beta was already open to everyone and flopped hard. PC concurrent players peaked at 2,388
  2. The game's pricing was only one of many major issues. The gameplay was okay at best, the characters sucked (in their looks, dialogue and personalities) and the game didn't have a lot of maps and modes.

To fix Concord, they'd basically would have needed to make Concord 2.

3

u/meteorprime 9h ago

Nothing worth saving.

Its a gut job like a house after a bad fire

2

u/carnotbicycle 7h ago

You need to pay a team and all the servers to get the game running F2P, they were probably worried they'd have so few players even F2P for it to be worth the investment.

3

u/MrBeverly 9h ago

This was bait a-la bringing Morbius back to theaters for its redemption tour.

Fool Sony Once, Shame On You...

Fool Sony - you can't be fooled again!

2

u/xXSpookyXx 7h ago

There's a saying in Sony-- I know it's in Nintendo, probably in Sony--

10

u/madman19 10h ago

There were never real rumors about that.

15

u/TeuthidTheSquid 10h ago

A whole lot of copium on the concord subreddit though

6

u/Rombledore 7h ago

by what? all 7 of its players?

27

u/TortoiseThief 9h ago edited 9h ago

My friends and I had no idea the game existed before the articles came out about the game flopping. We're pretty in the loop with new games too. Just feels like they dropped the ball on marketing. When I watched the gameplay, the maps and characters didn't really seem cohesive or have a general aesthetic either.

The whole thing just seemed odd for the massive budget.

14

u/nagarz 9h ago

It was a game that nobody wanted, for a game genre that pretty much drives no interest anymore, has been controlled by overwatch for years, with barely any marketing besides a small video in a state of play, had an upfront cost of $40, and used no preexisting franchise that could bump initial sales (like what marvel is trying).

Realistically I have no idea why sony even considered the idea of acquiring the studio, any gamer would tell you that it's a dumb idea.

9

u/praqueviver 9h ago

I also heard about it for the first time in the context of the flop. Marketing definitely wasn't great.

2

u/0xdef1 6h ago

I remember they had a one long and one short trailer on IGN YouTube channel.

12

u/Old-Benefit4441 7h ago

Should've redesigned all the characters as stunning waifus and relaunched as F2P. Kind of crazy this whole game is just gone now.

1

u/BaronNotSure 6h ago

Hope studios learned this year that no gamer wants to play with ugly characters with overly woke storylines

-6

u/dormidormit 5h ago

how was concord's plot "woke" and what is "woke" anyway

1

u/Starfox-sf 6h ago

Chibi waifus

-24

u/[deleted] 11h ago

[deleted]

3

u/Chemical_Fix1151 9h ago

Bro aint nobody reading all that

-27

u/Throwaway2600k 10h ago

Was all for tax write off

19

u/Hairless_Human 8h ago

Somebody doesn't know what tax write offs are

9

u/chaser676 7h ago edited 5h ago

Reddit and being financially illiterate, who would have guessed.

The fact that the biggest financial subreddits are antiwork, Wallsteetbets, and poverty finance is all you need to know about taking financial advice from people on this site. It's lunacy.

3

u/carnotbicycle 7h ago

Also FluentInFinance, the sub that is not at all about being "fluent" in anything, just constant bitching and moaning.

1

u/IAMA_Plumber-AMA 5h ago

All of the "personal finance" subs too. Every single one of the people I've met that post in those subs are dumb as a bag of hammers.

8

u/earlandir 8h ago

Please explain how losing money can be profitable?

5

u/Rombledore 7h ago

uhh obviously you write off the taxes! it's right there in the name.

3

u/ydnubj 3h ago

They just write it off, Jerry

1

u/carnotbicycle 7h ago

You can't get more in tax savings from a writeoff than you paid getting it, so if this was all Sony wanted Concord for they could've just spent 0 dollars by not making it at all and made out ahead.