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Concord is being taken offline on September 6, purchases refunded

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First Helldivers and now Concord. How many more own goals can Sony make this year. :messenger_grinning_smiling:
 

DonkeyPunchJr

World’s Biggest Weeb
If they're pulling it so early, it has to be to work on it and try to salvage what they can from it, and not let all that dev time go down the drain. If they just wanted to completely abandon the game, they would have kept it active for a few weeks/months until it was completely dead. That would be my guess.
Doubt it. If they were were willing to invest more time + money in this game, they would’ve delayed it after the disastrous open beta. All the signs were already there that it was going to flop.

Sony sent this out to die thinking at least they’d be able to recoup a little of their investment by releasing it. Now it failed even worse than they feared and they were forced to unlaunch it and refund their customers. “Concord” name is now synonymous with massive failure.

It would be foolish to spend even another penny on this disaster. We’ll see.
 

CherryFalls

Banned
Geez, gotta choose between The Lost Child for Switch or Concord for PS5... I wonder which one will hold the most collectible value in the future...

DtuAYng.png

People should think twice before buying up a bunch of copies. Just because something is rare doesn't mean it'll have a market of potential buyers.

A physical copy of concord will have no value to anybody, nobody is going to pay you hundreds of dollars for concord to sit on their shelf in 20 years.
 

Fbh

Member
Bro, concord had many other issues too, not just being 40$, plenty of games are 40$ but dont bomb or at least dont bomb as hard :)

Yup. It's a combination of things.
Being $40 hurt it not because it's impossible to sell a multiplayer game for $40 but because it simply did nothing to justify the price.
It's a generic hero shooter that brings absolutely nothing new to the genre with no new interesting mechanics or game modes, and it's set in an uninteresting world with unappealing characters.

From what I gather the 2 main reasons they had to charge money upfront were better graphics and periodical story cutscenes, both things that IMO aren't that important to multiplayer gamers and which they instantly made irrelevant with the awful art direction. Better graphics become irrelevant when the entire visual design of your game is ugly, and story cutscenes become irrelevant when everyone hates the characters and the bootleg Guardians of the Galaxy world they inhabit.
 

winjer

Gold Member
Doubt it. If they were were willing to invest more time + money in this game, they would’ve delayed it after the disastrous open beta. All the signs were already there that it was going to flop.

Sony sent this out to die thinking at least they’d be able to recoup a little of their investment by releasing it. Now it failed even worse than they feared and they were forced to unlaunch it and refund their customers. “Concord” name is now synonymous with massive failure.

It would be foolish to spend even another penny on this disaster. We’ll see.

Considering that Sony made a full refund to all players, I think they are planning to do a tax write off.
They have sunk so much money into this game, that the best they can hope for is to reduce it's taxable income.

I know the film industry has some special tax benefits under Section 181 Tax Deduction.
Maybe there is something similar that game studios can access.
 

DonkeyPunchJr

World’s Biggest Weeb
Years later and this is still relevant,


Turns out the modern gaming audience is men, and it always will be. If Sony wanted to market this game for women, they should have made it either a Sims clone or a mobile game.

God I just love to see it.

The Reeee crowd soooo want to blame the CHUDs for rejecting this game, but then they’d have to admit that the “modern audience” who supposedly wants this stuff is nonexistent and that catering to this fictional audience = going broke.

So now they’re doing this awkward dance trying to simultaneously claim Concord is victim of “right wing rhetoric” while also pretending that wokeness had absolutely nothing to do with the game’s failure.
 

StreetsofBeige

Gold Member
I’m interested to see if Sony gives Concord another shot. Whether it’s F2P or they revamp the graphics or do other updates it doesn’t really matter.

Giving the game another shot in the future means they think it’s still worth going after it and putting more costs into improving and maintaining any future version.

The PR statement made it sound they are really looking into adjusting the game, instead of outright burying it.
 

zokie

Member

thank you for this , i am gonna show this to a real gardener friend who also loves playing botanist in ffxiv

Edit : my friend replied " Very good! You can also freeze carrots for up to three months but it looks like Concord will be shelved indefinitely!
🤣
"
 
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What's really funny reading through this thread is seeing just about every crazy personal grievance someone has had about some aspect of gaming is coming in here to shout about it like that's the reason this game did poorly or to make a point about the industry as a whole. Fucking oof.
 

StreetsofBeige

Gold Member
Sweeping this dumpster fire under the rug just 2 weeks in basically says that Sony seems to have learned that very expensive lesson.

After some googling, apparently this is Firewalk studios' first game. Sony acquired it from Probablymonsters in 2023. Buying a studio that has no proven track record and one that has already spent 7 years (at that point) working on their first game feels like an extremely risky decision. What were they thinking? Surely by then they would've known the game looks like crap. It feels like Sony didn't do their homework and got fleeced because the studio had ex-bungie devs.
It’s the type of thing media and tech does.

Not too many other industries do you give a new company with zero track record a giant budget to go after a AAA product. Instead, you start modest and build your way up. And heck, maybe after some success over 10 years then you grow to some massive corporation building plants, regional offices and expanding trucking fleets around the globe.

In media and tech, it seems super easy to PR I’m a former google bro kind of thing and suddenly every big company and venture captialist fund will write you a cheque for half a billion hoping they become the next google.
 
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Jaybe

Member
Doubt it. If they were were willing to invest more time + money in this game, they would’ve delayed it after the disastrous open beta. All the signs were already there that it was going to flop.

Sony sent this out to die thinking at least they’d be able to recoup a little of their investment by releasing it. Now it failed even worse than they feared and they were forced to unlaunch it and refund their customers. “Concord” name is now synonymous with massive failure.

It would be foolish to spend even another penny on this disaster. We’ll see.

I agree. I think they close the studio this Friday or early next week. They want the ‘bad news’ out of the way before they have their PS5 Pro announcement presentation which will take all the focus off of Concord/Firewalk.
 

Filben

Member
Every time I see ‘Official Staff Communication’ I chuckle.
It's amazing how serious they think of themselves with this kind of wording.

You'd think it's run by some Germans and I wonder when they start calling it "Amtliche Bekanntmachung" or "Forumskommunikationsverordnung im Auftrag der Forumsvertretung nach §12 Abs. 2 Satz 1 und §14f sowie §18ff".

I mean, some fascist tendencies are noticeable there so I can imagine some over-compensating fellow German bearing the guilt of generational suffering trying to tip the balance the complete opposite way.
 
Most games i buy these days are small “indie” games..

Best gameplay.
Go play balatro
Go play loop hero
Go play dave the diver
Go play hades 2
Go play megaloot
Go play corekeeper
Go play the new factorio patch.

Stop playing tripple A gaas shit
Stop buying ubishit games
Stop paying for pointless MTX
Diablo 4 is a fucking joke

I’d rather quit gaming than primarily play indie games.
 

Life Diff

Member
Lots of commercial failures with a running theme...

CbFUzkq.jpeg

6DMXq8i.jpeg


u0kwHXC.jpeg


Ny7PDbK.jpeg


XkYCO4s.jpeg


IDK it's starting to feel like maybe the demographic least likely to play video games isn't the one you should be centering your characters around. Just a thought

Watch this space...

pUowFRk.jpeg
OLVhXsL.jpeg

CJ2MZvy.jpeg
Alan wake 2 didn't release with a physical version, has nothing to do with the skin colour of a character in the game.
 

tommib

Banned
People who stopped playing (for now) helldivers like me already played hundreds of hours so that sound pretty stupid.

Most people already got their 40 dollars worthy with the game.
I got 70 hours out of that game. Easily the best 39.99 I paid for this year. Being there on day one was quite something.
 
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GymWolf

Member
I got 70 hours out of that game. Easily the best 39.99 I paid for this year. Being there on day one was quite something.
I have like 190 hours and ready to return after the first big balancement patch or third enemy faction.
 
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Kagero

Member
Lots of commercial failures with a running theme...

CbFUzkq.jpeg

6DMXq8i.jpeg


u0kwHXC.jpeg


Ny7PDbK.jpeg


XkYCO4s.jpeg


IDK it's starting to feel like maybe the demographic least likely to play video games isn't the one you should be centering your characters around. Just a thought

Watch this space...

pUowFRk.jpeg
OLVhXsL.jpeg

CJ2MZvy.jpeg
Now someone do a quick screen comparison between Asia's output of games and send it to North American Devs. Agendas need to go. The reason why I play games is not to be represented. I play games as an escape. I just want to see cool shit. It's super simple.
 

TintoConCasera

I bought a sex doll, but I keep it inflated 100% of the time and use it like a regular wife
Is the new DLC about space stuff? Or will they also add something free via patch?

In any case, thanks for the nice news fren. Can't wait to go back and build another spaghetti factory.
 

Toots

Gold Member
It's amazing how serious they think of themselves with this kind of wording.

You'd think it's run by some Germans and I wonder when they start calling it "Amtliche Bekanntmachung" or "Forumskommunikationsverordnung im Auftrag der Forumsvertretung nach §12 Abs. 2 Satz 1 und §14f sowie §18ff".

I mean, some fascist tendencies are noticeable there so I can imagine some over-compensating fellow German bearing the guilt of generational suffering trying to tip the balance the complete opposite way.
  • Offizieller Direktor für Personalkommunikation at Resetera: [the Nazis burst into the room] Dr. Jones?
  • Indiana Jones, Professor Henry Jones: Yes?
  • Offizieller Direktor für Personalkommunikation at Resetera : I will take zuh post now.
  • Indiana Jones, Professor Henry Jones: Wuh-what p-post ?
  • Principal SS Officer at Castle: You have zuh post in your pocket.
  • Professor Henry Jones: You dolt! Do you think my son would be that stupid? That he would freely express his own opinions on his main account on reeee ?
  • [pause]
  • Professor Henry Jones: You didn't, did you?
  • [another pause]
  • Professor Henry Jones: You didn't post it, did you?
  • Indiana Jones: Well, uh...
  • Professor Henry Jones: You *did*!
  • Indiana Jones: Look, can we discuss this later?
  • Professor Henry Jones: Why didn't you post it under a alt!
  • Indiana Jones: Will you take it easy?
  • Professor Henry Jones: Take it easy? Why do you think I use a vpn in the first place? So my ip wouldn't fall into their hands!
  • Indiana Jones: I posted it to make you laugh!
  • Professor Henry Jones: Oh, yeah? And who's gonna post funny memes now, JUNIOR?
  • Indiana Jones: [shouts] I told you...
  • [grabs a gun and shoots all mods dead]
  • Indiana Jones: DON'T call me Junior!
True Story Video GIF by Eternal Family
 

GymWolf

Member
Alan wake 2 didn't release with a physical version, has nothing to do with the skin colour of a character in the game.
Yeah, it was just sam lake pulling a death stranding and unfortunately the dude doesn't have enough fans like kojima that enable all of its umm...peculiar projects.
 
Let's not forget that Helldivers turned into the worst reviewed game on steam ever within 1 weekend.

It's a game no one expected and blew up to one of the top sellers this year. It doesn't matter what happens to HD2 now it will be a win in Sony's book no matter what. Not only that but they can now work with Arrowhead to make HD3 eventually and improve upon the formula. They have a real hit here and I think there's even a possibility to make a movie\show of this IP if done right.
 

Shubh_C63

Member
If they make the core gameplay better while also deleting every character and starting from scratch and make it F2P, maybe.
About deleting characters realistically, changing core characters to good flashy ones would just be too embarrassing at this point. No way Sony won't have a PR nightmare if they introduced 3 more characters in F2P launch that are traditionally skin showing hot/cool looking models.

I have no idea how they can salvage the characters. They can't.
 
Alan wake 2 didn't release with a physical version, has nothing to do with the skin colour of a character in the game.

Not to mention it's not like the IP is known as some crazy money maker. The remake didn't make money as far as I remember and the original did poorly to the point MS wanted something new from them and not another sequel.
 
About deleting characters realistically, changing core characters to good flashy ones would just be too embarrassing at this point. No way Sony won't have a PR nightmare if they introduced 3 more characters in F2P launch that are traditionally skin showing hot/cool looking models.

I have no idea how they can salvage the characters. They can't.


Actually there's a way. To make it a real parody, ala Shrek. Control those characters but painting them with negative or embarrassing traits.

But they need good writers and fire all the woke psychos cos that would be straight-up insulting to them, which SHOULD be.
 

Mossybrew

Banned
I wonder how much of an "Emperor's New Clothes" situation this was internally at varying levels. Like, there had to be people that knew in their bones this thing was going to tank, but unless they're at the very top of the food chain, what can they do. Say something, and suddenly you're "bringing negative energy to the team" and "not a team player" and "not sharing the vision" and shit. People want to keep their jobs so they go along to get along. And then here we are.
 

StreetsofBeige

Gold Member
Not to mention it's not like the IP is known as some crazy money maker. The remake didn't make money as far as I remember and the original did poorly to the point MS wanted something new from them and not another sequel.
First game after 10+ years I think sold millions of copies. Too lazy to google. But that total was after years of bargain binning and the game was also included in a console bundle too.
 

twilo99

Member
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BbMajor7th

Member
Arguing that people actively hating on a game online, constructing wild conspiracy theories about its creators and looking for every excuse to shit on it can materially harm its chances of success is pretty wild after what happened with Hogwarts Legacy. You had professional review sites refusing to review it and popular forums banning conversation about it, but it was still the biggest-selling game of the year. Meanwhile, we're supposed to believe that a few people wisecracking about the Concord on comments sections turned an otherwise great game into an unprecedented flop?

Brandon Scott Jones Ghosts GIF by CBS
 
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