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BREAKING: Sony is shutting down Firewalk Studios, the maker of the recent shooter Concord (Update: Neon Koi is also closing)

blacktout

Member
Totally fucked?

Sony will release Ghost of Yotei in februari and almost everyone will forget all about Concord and Firewalk.

Huh? Why February? If the release date was that close, wouldn't they have just dated it during the State of Play instead of using a generic "2025" placeholder?

I could totally see it being a summer game, but probably not Q1.
 

twilo99

Gold Member
Probably meant it'll be studied as an example of a US$400 Million echo chamber that imploded immediately upon contact with the real world.

Calling it underperforming is a severely rose tinted perspective.

Happens with start ups all the time tho.. big money piles up on an idea, doesn’t work out, money moves along.

I don’t see anything facilitating or unusual about any of this so I might be missing something
 

tkscz

Member

Build a new, customized next-generation FPS engine in Unreal 4 -> 5, delivering top-tier gameplay feel, beautiful worlds, and a performant 60fps technical experience on a stable and scalable backend on PS5 and PC to hundreds of thousands of players in our beta
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Yeah ain't no way they had hundreds of thousands of people on the beta and only 4000 returned to buy the game.

And if they did, they ignored the hell out of people telling them the game wasn't that good, I hope pleasing those 4000 people was worth it on some personal level.

She actually tweeted how she considered work on Concord her magnum opus and that she didn't give a f about how it would be received...
It's why these artist types need to stick to low budget indie games where 300 people buying your little game at $5 will be enough. Too much pride, seeing it as a piece of art rather than a work of entertainment. She wasn't working on some grand story driven epic, she was working on a GaaS shooter with the entire purpose being to make money on constant updating content. Magnum opus isn't exactly what you'd want on something like this.
 
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The only thing worse would be if this game was a success.
The less time PlayStation spends on GaaS and damn battle pass content the better.
I hope their upcoming GaaS games fail too.
 

pasterpl

Member
Making so much many from selling PS5s and Pro consoles and remasters of the remakes and they still decide to destroy lives of people working at these 2 studios, will destroy some local communities etc. /s this type of post I have seen multiple times in Xbox threads when Sony closed studios. Waiting for damage control.
 
The worst thing is that it's not Firewalk Studios fault. The fault was made by who the fuck chose to invest money in GaaS, which is, Sony.

???
How is it not Firewalk's fault? This game was the reason why Sony bought them in the first place. Sony didn't force them to make a GaaS title. They just invested heavily into what the studio was already doing.
 

jshackles

Gentlemen, we can rebuild it. We have the capability to make the world's first enhanced store. Steam will be that store. Better than it was before.
178 people lost their jobs, That really sucks. I guess there was no way to turn it around after what happened. Money wasted down the drain unfortunately.
Anyone working in this studio should have seen the writing on the wall when Concord flopped and was effectively recalled. It definitely sucks for those 178 people (most of which are probably not decision makers and are just doing the job they're told to do), but they've also had several months to prepare for this eventuality.
 

Topher

Identifies as young
Nope. But they need games or are u happy with influx of one fp per year?

No, I am not. There is, however, a massive difference between needing more games and being "totally fucked". Especially in light of their lack of competition. But if you were being hyperbolic then I get it.
 

Trilobit

Gold Member
It's honestly sad that people are losing their jobs. Some might have been parents so their families might have a rough couple of months now. But I hope it serves as a wake up call to other studios that it's important to allow constructive criticism in the company and that suffocating the exchange of opinions comes with a big risk.
 
No, but they greenlit the thing. I'd say there is plenty of blame to go around.
They bought firewalk last year, firewalk has been making this game for 8 years. Sony thought they had a good GaaS on their hands and firewalk was so confident they accepted an offer. Regardless of anything firewalk was going to close with or without Sony.

In the end Firewalk thought they were much better than they were. At this point, Firewalks owners were the real winners.
 
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