Sony to take PlayStation 5 shooter Concord offline, offer full refunds after disastrous launch

Sony is facing one of the biggest video game disasters in history, pulling its “woke” new PlayStation shooter offline and offering full refunds.

Sony is pulling its PlayStation 5 and PC shooter Concord offline and offering full refunds less than two weeks after a disastrous launch, marking one of the biggest video game flops in history.

The 5v5 team-based hero shooter, similar to Blizzard’s popular Overwatch, launched on August 23 to decent reviews from critics, but failed to attract any interest from gamers.

On PC platform Steam, Concord peaked on launch day at just 697 concurrent players — a shockingly low number for brand-new triple-A game from a major studio — while on PlayStation 5 it was ranked as low at 147th by daily active players.

Industry analysts have estimated that Concord, which retailed for $US40 ($60), may have sold as few as 25,000 copies.

Sony announced in a blog post on Tuesday that it was taking Concord offline from September 6 to “explore options, including those that will better reach our players”.

“While we determine the best path ahead, Concord sales will cease immediately and we will begin to offer a full refund for all gamers who have purchased the game for PS5 or PC,” it said.

“If you purchased the game for PlayStation 5 from the PlayStation Store or PlayStation Direct, a refund will be issued back to your original payment method. Customers who purchased from other digital storefronts will also be refunded.”

Concord is being taken offline. Picture: Sony

The company said it had been “listening closely to your feedback” since launch and thanked “everyone who has joined the journey”.

“Your support and the passionate community that has grown around the game has meant the world to us,” it said. “However, while many qualities of the experience resonated with players, we also recognise that other aspects of the game and our initial launch didn’t land the way we’d intended.”

Concord had been in development at Firewalk Studios for around eight years. Sony, like many publishers seeking to cash in on the live-service video game trend, purchased Firewalk Studios in 2023 for an undisclosed sum.

It’s not clear exactly how much Concord cost to develop, but estimates based on budgets for similar games range anywhere from $US50 million ($75 million) to $US200 million ($300 million).

This year’s other major flop, Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League, lost Warner Bros. Entertainment $US200 million even with comparatively more players than Concord, peaking at more than 13,000 on Steam.

Sony had been hoping to repeat the success of Helldivers 2, its surprise smash-hit live-service game which exploded after launching in February, reaching a peak of nearly half a million concurrent players.

The game’s character designs were criticised. Picture: X

Concord received middling to positive reviews on launch.

IGN said it was a “very fun sci-fi hero shooter that shows real promise, but lacks both innovation and content”, while Eurogamer said its “snappy combat and colourful character abilities make it a perfectly playable shooter”.

But it was widely seen as lacking a unique selling point to justify its price compared with free-to-play alternatives like Overwatch and Valorant.

Several industry analysts who spoke to IGN “all agreed on the reasons it had failed”. “Concord suffered from poor marketing, a high price point, and most critically, a lack of differentiation in an oversaturated genre,” IGN reported.

Concord might have the UGLIEST Characters Designs I have ever seen. pic.twitter.com/OuaIMv0eyh

— OmegaValwin (@omegavalwin) August 24, 2024

On social media, however, many took issue with the elephant in the room — its character designs. “Concord might have the ugliest characters designs I have ever seen,” one X user wrote.

Another said, “I’m starting to get genuinely upset about Concord’s character designs. If this was a small indie game, I’d chalk it up to a disagreement of style. This is a huge game that spent a decade in the oven and the end result is characters that look like this. What the f**k?”

Mark Kern, a former World of Warcraft developer, wrote, “Concord, the new game by Firewalk Studios, is so focused on ‘inclusive’ teams that they forgot the white guys in their game. Inclusive should not mean racist against white people, but it too often does.”

Concord is a new progressive and modern shooter for Pc & Playstation. It features five black women, four aliens, three robots, and one white man. It's incredibly diverse and non-heteronormative. Plus, it has pronouns. Are you excited? 😆 pic.twitter.com/DpLfjIvpp1

— LearningTheLaw (@Mangalawyer) May 31, 2024

One X user joked, “Concord is a new progressive and modern shooter for PC and PlayStation. It features five black women, four aliens, three robots, and one white man. It’s incredibly diverse and non-heteronormative. Plus, it has pronouns. Are you excited?”

Concord’s lead character designer, Jon Weisnewski, had previously made no secret of his “woke” left-leaning views.

“Whites must acknowledge their privileged position, and then actively work for equality,” he wrote on X in 2020. “It will be hard and confronting work, but if we don’t we’re complicit. And complicity allows systemic racism to persist.”

This is an over simplification. The sentiment being expressed is that whites must acknowledge their privileged position, and then actively work for equality. It will be hard and confronting work, but if we don’t we’re complicit. And complicity allows systemic racism to persist.

— NEWSK (@sharkeatsman) June 5, 2020

In another thread, Mr Weisnewski claimed the “entire penal/judicial system is white supremacy”.

Conservative news website The Federalist said the failure of Concord was a lesson that “nobody wants to buy these over-the-top woke disasters”.

“The game features a menagerie of hideous DEI [diversity, equity and inclusion] characters with their pronouns proudly flagged in the corner,” contributor Douglas Blair wrote.

“A simple glance at the character design indicates this game was not made for the average player but rather for radical leftists.”

By contrast, Blair pointed to the jaw-dropping success of the “explicitly non-woke” Chinese-made Black Myth: Wukong, which sold an estimated 16 million copies in 10 days.

“Notably absent is the forced diversity and politics many western games have embraced of late, much to the chagrin of gaming journalists,” he wrote. “Developers should focus on courting gamers with the actual content they want, bereft of leftist politics.”

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