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Concord is being taken offline on September 6, purchases refunded

Astray

Member
The next date to watch is going to be the next Sony quarterly report. They will likely announce there what they're gonna do with the game (my money is on studio closure and write off).

It will be very interesting to see what happens to Fairgame$ next:

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We're looking at another DOA Sony live service game.
Dislikes are not real anymore. The actual numbers are hidden by YouTube now.
 

MiguelItUp

Member
The actual gameplay was fine, gunplay was good, sound design top notch etc….. but it did have a lot of things going against it. I think if more people were objective they would agree the gameplay was solid.
Yeah, I agree. I mean, what I played felt good definitely, I just didn't feel interested enough to drop $40 on it. If it were free to play, I would've given it more of a shot for sure. I feel like a lot more people would've. But at the same time, I know there was a lot that was dragging the game down for a lot of people. As a result, a lot of people didn't check it out themselves. But they may have if it was free and had a positive reception.
 

Bitstream

Member
Sony probably saw this stinking turd coming a mile away, but what was the alternative? Think of the DEI crying that would have happened if Sony cancelled it pre-flop? Letting it release and prove once and for all that there is no 'modern audience' was the most reasonable solution
 

Deft Beck

Member
  1. Concord will relaunch as "Concord: Freegunner's Edition" by Q3 2025. Greatly reduced price. All the story will be visual novel style cutscenes with voiceover. The game will have a year's worth of major updates and it will go on maintenance afterward. Heavy emphasis on cosmetic DLC to make margins.
  2. Concord will relaunch as a F2P game by Q3 2025 with a reduced budget and no story beyond paragraphs of text you can scroll through. All updates will be maintenance-based/cosmetic. What you see is what you get.
  3. Concord will never be seen again, and the game will become a tax write-off. Heads will roll, and we may not see Fairgame$ at all as collateral damage.

Which of these is more likely to you?
 
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diffusionx

Gold Member
#1: horrible idea. Another year of investment in a franchise with absolutely no pull, and a horrible, poisoned brand.
#2: see above
#3: only logical option at this point

I would not be surprised if there are massive changes at SCE after this, too.
 
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amc

Member
People saying "when it goes free to play". This shit ain't never coming back in any shape or form. It's cursed, no fiddling and reworking can change that. You don't give the kiss of life to something this dead and disliked. You bury it and move on as quickly as possible so as to remove the stench of failure from the company.

Why trot it back out under f2p in a few months time only to reignite the failure to Sony's customer base. It's cooked.
 

RickSanchez

Member
i saw the news and thought 'GAF will have a field day with this'. So i came over, and sure enough, the thread is 15 pages long within 90 minutes of being posted. Damn y'all enjoying some Schadenfreude.
 
People saying "when it goes free to play". This shit ain't never coming back in any shape or form. It's cursed, no fiddling and reworking can change that. You don't give the kiss of life to something this dead and disliked. You bury it and move on as quickly as possible so as to remove the stench of failure from the company.

Why trot it back out under f2p in a few months time only to reignite the failure to Sony's customer base. It's cooked.
Its a meme now, there's no saving it.
 
And both of those games are pretty diverse too, let alone games like VALORANT, Apex Legends & Overwatch.

Schreier just doesn't want to admit that most of the backlash against Concord isn't due to diversity; it's due to the game having no hook and mediocre character designs. But admitting that would mean admitting maybe most gamers aren't istaphobes after all.
It's just a mix of both, one of the worst character designs i've seen in the AAA industry, and some clearly forced diversity.

And a few unreal stories about some devs from Firewalk. Well, and a game that lacked content and progression.

Guess the new pronoun for Concord is "Was/Were"
 

ReBurn

Gold Member
It's about to be a ps plus game watch lmao another flop for Sony
They won't put it on PS+ without a monetization plan. Let's face it, nobody is going to buy content unless they drastically change whatever their plans were for skins and characters because nobody wants what they were selling the first time around.

The best bet for Sony would be to completely withdraw it and write it down as a loss instead of throwing more money at it.
 

Hookshot

Gold Member
Sony probably saw this stinking turd coming a mile away, but what was the alternative? Think of the DEI crying that would have happened if Sony cancelled it pre-flop? Letting it release and prove once and for all that there is no 'modern audience' was the most reasonable solution
Sega cancelled a game that was very far along called "Hyenas" because they couldn't seen any protentional returns in it. Sony could have done the same to avoid this embarrassment, although none of us would have believed it would have gone this badly for concord.
 

Draugoth

Gold Member
The only way for them to turn around is to use the negative discourse in their favour and do a marketing stunt, there's no other way, even with going F2P. They would have to do something crazy like turning every character into a hot chick like Eve in Stellar Blade
 
3

The reputation it has gained, rightly or wrongly, means going F2P is unlikely to give it any sort of redemption with so many other options out there
 
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I really hope Marathon suffers the same fate. Hopefully that gets cancelled beforehand and we can get back to single player games with added on multiplayer.
 
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3. If it comes back any other way, it'll do open beta numbers at best. The game is dead.
The only way for them to turn around is to use the negative discourse in their favour and do a marketing stunt, there's no other way, even with going F2P. They would have to do something crazy like turning every character into a hot chick like Eve in Stellar Blade
Day one.
 
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Deft Beck

Member
#1: horrible idea. Another year of investment in a franchise with absolutely no pull, and a horrible, poisoned brand.
#2: see above
#3: only logical option at this point

I would not be surprised if there are massive changes at SCE after this, too.

I only came up with the first two after seeing what happened with Multiversus. WB totally squandered all goodwill with that game's early access period, and I thought they could've done a proper relaunch, but it feels just like more of the same.
 

MrMephistoX

Member
I’m actually disappointed about the refunds.

Screw you for buying this trash. You don’t deserve a refund.
Will die on this hill the gameplay is fun as hell so I hope it comes back F2P with more modes but I’ll admit they need to do better default skins and revamp some characters outright if they’re going to make another go at it since the anti-DEI mob tanked its chances. Best option would be F2P with the Killer Instinct business model: free with a rotating roster and a $40 to unlock the base content. They also need to spend way more on influencers.
 
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Plenty of estimates out there the development alone was over 100 million not counting studio purchase so its a pretty safe assumption on my part of their total costs to this point

It’s a big assumption that dev cost alone was $100M other the studio also cost another $100M without any IP
 

kaizenkko

Member
Well, the best option for this game was never being release. But after a lot of bad decisions (buying the studio and support this game), shutting down the game so quickly was ok. Sony still have use a good window for that, because Astro Bot reviews will pop in the next days and people will forget Concord.

But what really matters is: what Sony will do with their others GAAS projects?
 
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