Concord was a sci-fi player-versus-playerhero shooter video game played from a first-person perspective.[2] The game featured a variety of alien characters, each with different abilities, such as robot legs for high jumps and diamond skin for enhanced damage absorption. One of the groups within the game is known as the Freegunners, who were mercenaries.[3]
The initial preview revealed five characters, and the game released with sixteen characters.[4] The game was expected to have free post-launch updates that would have added more characters and maps.[3] The game would have featured new cutscenes about the characters and the ongoing story every week.[5]
Concord was the first game developed by Firewalk Studios, a studio located in Bellevue, Washington, and founded in 2018. Firewalk initially developed Concord in collaboration with its parent company, ProbablyMonsters, until the studio was acquired by Sony Interactive Entertainment in April 2023.[6]
Firewalk Studios officially announced Concord during the PlayStation Showcase on May 24, 2023, with a CGI trailer.[7] A beta for the game was released in July 2024 to underwhelming player numbers. The game was released for PlayStation 5 and Windows on August 23, 2024.[8][9]
Firewalk Studios reported that the game was in development for around eight years.[10]
On September 3, Sony announced that Concord would be taken offline and that all copies of the game that had been sold up to that point would be refunded, citing that "aspects of the game and our initial launch didn't land the way we'd intended" and that they would "explore options, including those that will better reach our players". The game was delisted from digital storefronts,[11] and the game's servers went offline just after 17:00 (UTC) on September 6, 2024.[12]
The swift shutdown was attributed to several factors, including Concord's failure to differentiate itself from established hero shooter games like Overwatch and Apex Legends, its lack of innovative gameplay mechanics, its generic character roster, and its frustrating map design.[13] The game also faced criticism for being a full-priced release in a genre where most competitors are free-to-play, as well as its eight-year development cycle making it feel outdated upon release, with it struggling to align with evolving market trends and player expectations.[14]
Concord received "mixed or average" reviews from critics, according to review aggregator website Metacritic, based on 45 reviews for the PlayStation 5 and 20 reviews for PC.[15][16] On OpenCritic, the game is recommended by 22% of 62 critic reviews.[17]
Push Square rated it seven out of ten, and wrote: "Firewalk's debut may not be out of this world, but it's genuinely pretty good overall."[24]Digital Trends rated it three out of five, and wrote: "Concord has the bones of a fun multiplayer game, but it's missing the meat."[18]Video Games Chronicle rated it three out of five, and was critical of the $40 price tag, advising players to wait until the game was available on PlayStation Plus.[26]Eurogamer rated it three out of five, attributing the rating to the heroes' "muddled" character design, writing: "The heroes seem to be visually either under or overdesigned".[19] Nova Smith of PC Gamer rated Concord 45 out of 100, describing it as "underbaked, overpriced, and dated" while criticizing the game for its "agonizingly slow movement speed", uninspired map design and "forgettable" cast of characters.[27]
Upon release, the game was a commercial failure that failed to exceed 1,000 concurrent players on the Steam platform, far lower than the 400,000 initial Steam players of a different first-party live service multiplayer game released on PC and PS5, Helldivers 2. PCGamesN attributed its poor sales to a combination of a lack of uniqueness and a high price while competing in a heavily saturated market dominated by free-to-play games like Overwatch 2 and Valorant.[28]
One week after launch, the game ranked 40th on the PlayStation Store in terms of sales, with a player count on Steam measured at 162 on August 29.[29] It was estimated that less than a week after release the game had sold around 25,000 units, with sales of 10,000 on Steam and 15,000 on PlayStation.[30] In comparison, Astro Bot sold more physical copies in two days in the United Kingdom alone than Concord sold worldwide.[31]
In August 2024, it was revealed that the game would be adapted in the video game anthology series Secret Level.[32][33] Despite the game's shutdown, its episode will remain in the series.[34]