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

March Climber

Gold Member
sub-rote-kirk.gif


Shame but it is what it is 🤷‍♂️. I kept thinking there was a 1% chance for a co-op campaign relaunch.
 
When someone like me that doesn't even play those kind of games thought the character design was god awful you know they had a problem the fact they continue and release the game with such horrible characters what did they expect.

Ultimately, the character designs were the game's biggest problem. And it doesn't even have anything to do with "woke" or whatever; there are other similar games on the market with a big focus on diversity in characters like Apex Legends, VALORANT and Overwatch, and all of those games are very successful both critically and commercially, even by many of the so-called "chuds".

The truth is, many of Concord's designs were just generally awful and when that was paired with them also being very diverse, it just created a 1-2 combination that killed interest for many involved. Turns out, people want appealing characters first and foremost, regardless if they're diverse or not. Whodathunkit? And that goes for the so-called progressives who want to push diversity at all costs, but spent more time mocking the game than actually buying & playing it. They didn't practice what they preach, in fact 9 times out of 10 they don't.

Again, Concord could've had the same arrangement of diverse character designs and been perfectly fine, if they also actually made the designs more fleshed out and appealing in their aesthetics. The game routinely ignored time-honored practices of solid character design and paid the price for it. As has now, the entire studio.
 
I feel bad for people losing their jobs but this game had to go and the studio with it. This game was dogshit and had no business being made. Sony and Firewalk fucked around with mediocre GAAS shit and found out. I hope Sony have truly learned from this fuck up and whoever gave this game the green-light has to go and I don’t care if it’s Hermen Hulst.
 

Denton

Member
Haven and FairGame$ next.

Honestly I think Bioware is safe until atleast the next Mass Effect. Probably after that though, but who knows? That studio has been limping along for a decade and EA seems to be okay with it.
Bioware has multiple teams, if Veilguard fails (which I think is likely) to even recoup its budget, I would not be surprised to see its team axed, while Mass Effect's team proceeds.
 
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Not exactly a shocker. I just hope they learned the right lessons, and that they are smart enough to keep the tech artists, animators and other talented stuff inside SIE.

Oh, and make sure to never employ that jackass AD who overruled the character concept artists.
 
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Kacho

Gold Member

Firewalk is signing off one last time.Firewalk began with the idea of bringing the joy of multiplayer to a larger audience. Along the way we assembled an incredible team who were able to:- Navigate growing a new startup into a team during a global pandemic: Firewalk was founded in 2018 and was very small for its first couple years, only entering full Production in 2022.- 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.- Manage an acquisition / integration while readying technical and preliminary tests.- And ultimately ship and deliver a great FPS experience to players- even if it landed much more narrowly than hoped against a heavily consolidated market.We took some risks along the way – marrying aspects of card battlers and fighting games with first-person-shooters – and although some of these and other aspects of the IP didn’t land as we hoped, the idea of putting new things into the world is critical to pushing the medium forward.The talent at Firewalk and the level of individual craft is truly world-class, and teams within Sony Interactive Entertainment and across the industry will be fortunate to work with them. Please reach out to Recruiting at PlayStation for inquiries, and thank you to all the very many teams, partners and fans who supported us along the way.See you in the Tempest.- Firewalk Studios…[end transmission]

didnt read rashida jones GIF by Tiffany
 

Killjoy-NL

Member
There was no other option.

Tried to tell the morons in their official Discord they should've taken this outcome into consideration, but that's like arguing with a brick wall.
But that's probably what led to this to begin with.

Shit happens.
 

Danjin44

The nicest person on this forum
I don’t care the game or studio behind it but to me it’s crazy that entire studio gets shutdown over one single failure.
 
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dmaul1114

Member
Not surprising at all. I just think the true failure was PS leadership not seeing how deeply unpopular the game was going to be. Not the studio itself who was told to make the game.

As usual, they are punishing the wrong people.

Yeah it's just dumb to try to make clones of successful GAAS games. Overwatch 2 is out there and F2P. People that are playing that are likely going to stick with it, especially vs. jumping over to a paid game. People that aren't are probably sick of hero shooters (or never were interested in them) and certainly aren't going to pay to play one.

Just like there aren't really big budget challengers to COD, Madden, Fifa etc. these days. Most service gamers are locked into the franchises they play and it will take something new and unique to pull them away or pull in a different market.

Helldivers 2's success hopefully shows Sony that they need to find their own niches if they want to have successful GAAS, not just make clones of Overwatch, Fortnite, COD etc. and hope to get people to switch.
 
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tkscz

Member
Look, I'm not going to celebrate the loss of jobs. They misread the industry and ignored all the signs that this wasn't looking good. Win some lose some situation. The only thing we can hope is that a lesson is learned here. If the goal is purely to following the money, pay attention to who actually gives the money up.
 
Bungie, Haven: you are NEXT.
And we’ll finally got our old PlayStation back.

I doubt it at this point. If those games fail, SIE will probably just push Day 1 PC support for all of their games, do another round of price increases for hardware & PS+, and give us a remaster of a remaster of Horizon Forbidden West & LEGO Horizon.

At this point they seem full-steam ahead on having a fewer number of big Hollywood-style AAA that by their nature will probably end up forcing Day 1 Steam to make up for continued GAAS failures, and get less 3P exclusives as well. So basically expect the same as what it's already been the past year or so, but halve the 3P exclusives, increase prices by 20% and get ready for the Steam logo in all game trailers for Day 1 releases.

That seems to be the only means Totoki & others at Sony Corp & SIE are viewing PlayStation these days, very sadly.
 

nowhat

Member
Imagine celebrating people losing their jobs because the game was woke.
At least for me, it has nothing to do with wokeness or lack thereof. It's just, from the initial SoP reveal, the game seemed so derivative and uninteresting (granted, I'm not the target audience as I very seldom do multiplayer, but even I could see that). So this is not a celebration. Just an inevitability. Cut your losses, move on. Sad for the people involved, but such is life when it comes to business. Which is what this ultimately is. Corporations may be people, but they sure as hell ain't your friends.
 
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