Concord

Sony's $40 hero shooter, online for fourteen days

Shut down
19902026

Concord was a PlayStation 5 and PC hero shooter from Firewalk Studios, a team Sony bought in 2023, released on 23 August 2024 at $39.99 after roughly eight years of development. It sold an estimated 25,000 copies, peaked below 700 concurrent players on Steam, and Sony took it offline on 6 September 2024 with full refunds, fourteen days after launch. Firewalk was closed that October, and Concord became the shortest-lived big-budget game in memory.

Timeline [edit]

  1. 2018
  2. 2018 Launch
    Firewalk Studios is founded

    A team of Bungie and Activision veterans starts on what becomes Concord.

  3. 2023
  4. 20 April 2023 Acquisition
    Sony buys Firewalk

    PlayStation adds the studio a month before revealing the game.

  5. 24 May 2023 Feature
    Concord is revealed

    A cinematic trailer at the PlayStation Showcase.

  6. 2024
  7. 23 August 2024 Launch
    Concord launches

    $39.99 on PlayStation 5 and PC. Peak of 697 players on Steam.

  8. 3 September 2024 Shutdown announced
    Sony announces the shutdown and refunds

    "The launch didn't land the way we'd intended."

  9. 6 September 2024 Shutdown
    The servers go offline

    Fourteen days after launch.

  10. 29 October 2024 other
    Firewalk Studios is closed

    Sony confirms Concord will not return.

The site through time

Browse playstation.com as it was, via the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine:

2024 Full archive →

Ownership [edit]

Firewalk Studios (ProbablyMonsters) 2018–2023 Founded Founded by Bungie and Activision veterans, incubated at ProbablyMonsters
Sony Interactive Entertainment 2023–2024 Acquisition Bought the studio a year before launch, closed it two months after the shutdown

Why it shut down [edit]

Official line: Concord launched on 23 August 2024 to a peak of fewer than 700 concurrent players on Steam and estimated sales of about 25,000 copies. On 3 September 2024 Firewalk's game director Ryan Ellis announced the game would go offline on 6 September and every purchase would be refunded, saying the launch "didn't land the way we'd intended". On 29 October 2024 Sony closed Firewalk Studios and confirmed Concord would not return.

Our analysis: Concord was a competent shooter released into a genre where the free-to-play incumbents already owned everyone's evenings. Charging $40 for a game whose rivals cost nothing, with characters few people warmed to and after eight years of development, meant it needed to be extraordinary and was merely fine. Sony's decision to switch it off inside two weeks and refund everyone was, in its own way, the most decisive thing about it.

History [edit]

Eight years, two weeks

Firewalk Studios was founded in 2018 by veterans of Bungie and Activision, incubated by ProbablyMonsters, and bought outright by Sony Interactive Entertainment in April 2023. Concord, its first game, was revealed at a PlayStation Showcase on 24 May 2023 with a cinematic trailer that drew Guardians of the Galaxy comparisons: a crew of "Freegunners" on a spaceship, a new story episode each week, and a 5v5 hero shooter underneath.

It launched on 23 August 2024 on PlayStation 5 and Windows for $39.99. Reviews were middling to decent, praising the shooting and the polish and questioning the characters and the price. The players did not come. On Steam the game peaked at 697 concurrent users on launch weekend, and analysts estimated total sales at around 25,000 copies across both platforms. Overwatch, Apex Legends, Valorant and Marvel Rivals, all free, were the comparison, and against them a $40 entry fee was an argument nobody wanted to have.

The refund

On 3 September 2024, eleven days after launch, game director Ryan Ellis posted that Concord would go offline on 6 September and that everyone who had bought it, on any platform, would be refunded in full while the studio "explored options". The servers closed on schedule; streamers recorded the final minutes. On 29 October Sony announced it was closing Firewalk Studios and that Concord would not be coming back, moving some staff elsewhere in PlayStation Studios.

The post-mortems focused on cost and time. Reports put the development budget somewhere between $200 million and $400 million, figures Sony never confirmed, and described a project that had started before the free-to-play shooter boom and shipped after it. Concord became the reference point every subsequent live-service cancellation was measured against.

Afterlife

An episode of the Amazon anthology series Secret Level built around Concord aired in December 2024 anyway, a small monument to a game that no longer existed. Fan attempts to revive the servers were met with copyright takedowns.

The domain today

playstation.com is Sony's, and the Concord product page was removed. The game cannot be bought or played anywhere.

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Sources [edit]

  1. Introducing Concord, a new PvP multiplayer FPS from Firewalk Studios PlayStation Blog 24 May 2023 [archived]
  2. Concord is estimated to have sold only 25,000 units. Here's why analysts think it failed IGN 30 August 2024 [archived]
  3. Sony is taking Concord offline and refunding everyone The Verge 3 September 2024 [archived]
  4. Sony is shutting down Concord for good and closing Firewalk Studios The Verge 29 October 2024 [archived]
  5. Concord collapses and Firewalk falls The Guardian 30 October 2024

Last verified: 15 August 2026. Spotted an error? Suggest an edit (corrections with sources are reviewed and applied).