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What is the fate of Concord developer Firewalk Studios?

What happens to the studio behind Concord?


  • Total voters
    213
  • Poll closed .

saintjules

Gold Member
Playstation made a big deal out of its acquisition with them. So I expect a restructure from within and build onto a new title.
 

DeepSpace5D

Member
Get rid of “the professor” or whoever that weirdo was, and everyone who shared her(his? I don’t fuckin know) mindset.

Get one more shot at a game without all the dei shit and see what happens.

That’s what I’d do anyway.
 

Thanati

Member
Just to shed some light on the matter here.

The developers are often told what they should be making by the publisher and they are given periodic check-ins to demonstrate the current state etc. This is just as much on the publishing/executives.
 

simpatico

Member
OK but how have they spent this week? We've got dozens and dozens of people waking up, getting dressed and driving to the brand new Firewalk HQ every day. How are they spending their day? Is Sony just looking at it as a charity case because they feel bad about jerking them around?
 

DeVeAn

Member
hells bells disney GIF
 
They will become a support studio helping to speed up development of other games.


They took 8 years to make Concord, they can't speed up shit.


Firewalk is comprised of deranged woke managers and "yes, man" types, who will agree with whatever bullshit from the former. No talented worker would settle for this.

So, Firewalk is a studio with a rotten culture full of rotten employees. Sony should not let the rot spread to other studios.
 

Kacho

Gold Member
Talent worth keeping will be moved elsewhere. Everyone else gets laid off and the studio gets shuttered.
 

FeralEcho

Member
south park beat a dead horse GIF


michael jackson bed GIF


michael jackson ugh GIF


I don't know about all of them but hopefully the "artists" and the management team don't touch a game development tool ever again
 
I think layoffs. Sony bought them for Concord right. I hope they have a good idea to pitch.

"what if we made Guardians of the Galaxy but a MOBA"

Kind of wild that we don't have a good MOBA in some view other than top down. I think that's what Battle Born tried but I can't remember only tried the beta once and this was before I even tried MOBA's.
 

xanaum

Member
If the developers at Firewalk haven't started looking for jobs yet, I can't tell if they're too naive or just really optimistic.
 

ZehDon

Member
Right now, they'll be running a feasibility pass on what they can achieve with what they've already developed. Free 2 Play is the obvious next step, but they also know all of their characters are utter, utter garbage, so they'll be trying to re-tool those as fast as possible.

So, three potentials: Sony determines their studio is stacked with toxic devs who burned $250m and just pulls the plug entirely, or, it goes F2P and fails and Sony pulls the plug, or, the game limps on as a small F2P title and the studio is downsized to a support studio. But dev lay offs are inevitable - you can't burn a quarter of a billion dollars without casualties. For as bad as 343i was allowed to be for as long as they were allowed to be, after fucking Halo Infinite and burning half a billion, they were completely gutted.
 

tmlDan

Member
They took 8 years to make Concord, they can't speed up shit.


Firewalk is comprised of deranged woke managers and "yes, man" types, who will agree with whatever bullshit from the former. No talented worker would settle for this.

So, Firewalk is a studio with a rotten culture full of rotten employees. Sony should not let the rot spread to other studios.
no, they weren't they were a tiny studio and 8 years ago it was just an idea, they didnt start full development until 4 years ago.

This has been proven by a dev on the discord:

wENHtkX.png
 
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Drew1440

Member
They took 8 years to make Concord, they can't speed up shit.


Firewalk is comprised of deranged woke managers and "yes, man" types, who will agree with whatever bullshit from the former. No talented worker would settle for this.

So, Firewalk is a studio with a rotten culture full of rotten employees. Sony should not let the rot spread to other studios.
Half of those years were spent redesigning the game thanks to the DEI consultants.
 

laynelane

Member
They took 8 years to make Concord, they can't speed up shit.


Firewalk is comprised of deranged woke managers and "yes, man" types, who will agree with whatever bullshit from the former. No talented worker would settle for this.

So, Firewalk is a studio with a rotten culture full of rotten employees. Sony should not let the rot spread to other studios.

The Laura Flyer video (timestamped) that was discussed here recently talks about this. When you have a bad culture at a studio (toxic, broken feedback loop, etc.), the best people leave because they know they can get a job elsewhere. Competent people stay because they don't want to find a new job or lack confidence or any other reason - they stay but keep their heads down. What's left is very vocal and often inexperienced people making all the decisions for the game.

It's unclear whether this was the case at Firewalk but it does seem likely considering how disconnected Concord was from player expectations. It comes across like the studio really was in their own little bubble/echo chamber.
 

Majukun

Member
studio will probably survive until 2025 while they try to rework what they have for a new pitch to sony

but the whole thing will be probably deemed too risky/expensive and the studio closed and some of their best talents shared with other projects
 

Raven117

Member
Probably a support studio, but firing every creative lead.

There is no way Sony let’s them make anything with their name attached to it for quite some time.
 

BigBeauford

Member
Sony isn't stupid. They can see that Concord's performance was the result of an alt-right hate campaign and not an indictment of the game itself. I think the most likely outcome is for them to fund another, more indie project from Firewalk - more of a "test" in the $100m range, I'd guess - to evaluate whether it makes sense to fund more big projects from the studio.
And what mechanism did the alt-right employ to prevent the other 7,999,975,000 people on earth from buying it?
 

Bitstream

Member
This is both hilarious and scary because it actually could happen. So many individuals and groups blaming gamers for not buying their agenda driven products.

I could see ultra woke companies like MS or Sony doubling down.

If the woke rot is deeply entrenched within senior management, it will continue.
Nahhh, companies care about profits above all else. Once it's clear the 'modern audience' they've been chasing doesn't really exist, they will go back to games that actually pull in the $$
 

Varteras

Member
Closure announced right around fiscal year reports. Word of layoffs months prior. Some staff relocated to other Sony studios. Concord will never be mentioned by Sony again.
 

laynelane

Member
Closure announced right around fiscal year reports. Word of layoffs months prior. Some staff relocated to other Sony studios. Concord will never be mentioned by Sony again.

I definitely agree about Sony not mentioning Concord again. The lightening speed with which they pulled the game and offered refunds says it all, really.
 
Probably close the studio and reassign the developers. No reason to let go of the talent. They can fire the artists though, along with the executives.
 
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POKEYCLYDE

Member
Wouldn't surprise me if they're working on a free to play relaunch that will fail, resulting in studio closure or massive layoffs.

I doubt they get another 6 years to release a new game. They either prove their worth quickly (3 years tops) or they get closed.
 

RJMacready73

Simps for Amouranth
First off, fire the purple hairs then hand them the code for Last of Us Factions and let them run it, it's madness to think of a near realized game from ND is just sitting on some server somewhere gathering digital dust, the Concord Devs where already tooled up and ready for a live service game so everything is in place..

As for Alt right canceling the game, nah, the game got cancelled because it was derivative nonsense in a bloated market of free to play games, it looked generic AF with bland, boring characters that no gamer would want to play doing the same shit a ton of other games did better
 
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