Hearing about a major corporation like Sony pulling a title after it had barely warmed the shelves is unusual enough, but doing so within two weeks of launch is completely unheard of. Yet, this is what has happened with Concord, an eagerly awaited game that was released only a fortnight ago. This event has sparked an array of discussions and debates in the gaming community, with cries of “cover-up!” and “money laundering!” on the more conspiratorial side, and “What on Earth happened?” from the just plain puzzled. Let’s break down what happened, what it might mean, and what Concord may tell us about the industry’s future, particularly about EA’s and Ubisoft’s tendency to make poor business decisions.
Excitement surrounded the development of Concord, which Sony had positioned as a major multiplayer title. They aimed it at the competitive arena shooter market, and early footage looked fantastic. Fast-paced, with a Destiny/Overwatch feel, Concord’s gameplay was promised to be lightyears ahead of something like… Concord. With Concord, I should mention, you’re this robot… soldier… thing that, as I understand it, has some kind of Concord. Violation. And it’s in first-person. So you’re shooting a lot. And seemingly, headshots count for something. In the story context, after the Concord violation (which we didn’t get clear on), a group of brave/silly robots heads off into the wild… Of the cyberpunk future, which is painted with a greasy palette of dark colors.
Anticipation was high, but almost immediately after launch, the trouble began. Players began reporting big problems with the game’s performance within mere hours. The online modes, which were meant to be the big sell, were a hot mess. For all the hubbub about competitive multiplayer being the centerpiece of the experience, it was borderline unplayable on day one. I remember booting it up, excited to dive into a multiplayer mode with a few buds. I can still feel the disappointment of encountering lag so strong it felt like a preordained outcome. And I wasn’t alone; frustration and anger bubbled over across game forums and social media.
The situation was bad, and it got worse. Players spent hours where they should have been having fun—grinding the same boring missions over and over—just to get basic upgrades. All Concord offered in terms of in-game currency was some paltry sum that couldn’t even get you a stiff drink at the local bar. After a few days of getting blasted on social media, promises were made to fix things, but it was too late. The ship was taking on water and sinking fast. Sony’s first attempt to bail was a day-one patch that did little more than add some UI polish and fix a few technical problems. After that, a series of updates offered a range of fixes, from tweaking the weapons to adjusting the hit detection. But would you believe that the real problem with Concord was more than just technical? In terms of fun, Concord is just “not there.”
I have seen many ambitious games not live up to their potential, and I’ve been gaming long enough to have seen what happens when a title flops. The first title that flopped for me in the “ambitious game” category was probably Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within, which had a similar hype-to-plummet trajectory. I have also been on the receiving end of several Father Christmas moments when high-profile projects have been announced—Moments taken on trust that have seldom transformed into “magic” gameplay experiences. That said, the Case of Concord is an unusual one. To Indeed, I feel I’ve fathomed the depths of Concord, and yet on no occasion that I’ve reminisced step by step through storyline and mission do I feel it’s merited criticism. Concord is just another kind of sad story in the annals of vanity projects.
Two weeks post-launch, Sony made the surprising decision to remove Concord from play. It’s not unusual for games to take a beating in the post-release hype cycle, but a full pull with this much timing is pretty uncommon—especially for a game that had so much moonshot potential. Failure to launch is bad enough, but with Concord, Sony could effectively be seen sending a message about its first major foray into direct-to-consumer gaming. After all, when a big company puts a premium on some hunger games HQ, the implication is that if you don’t buy it, you won’t get to play it on any terms that are palatable (or lawful).
The game had fundamental problems that probably ran deeper than a couple of patches could remedy. Concord seemed doomed from the outset, whether that was due to poor planning, a rushed development cycle, or a failure to balance the all-important “fun” component that makes or breaks a game’s appeal. And with the gaming industry’s profit margins being what they are, there’s no room for a high-profile flop a la Concord.
What This Means for Future Game Releases
What can we take away from Concord’s short, stormy life? This moment reminds us of an important lesson: Launch your game smoothly, especially in the multiplayer space. If you don’t make a good first impression, people are likely to let your game go and not look back. In Concord’s case, this first-person-shooter, made by the studio that previously gave us Destiny, didn’t even seem to work well on the game’s first day. Sony stopped selling the game a few days after launch. After a bit, Sony shut down the game. Cut the losses. Avoid significant reputation damage. And let this moment be a reminder, I guess.
What really grabs my attention, however, is how the approach taken by Sony reflects a larger trend in the gaming industry. We’ve seen other large publishers shifting their focus to ongoing live service models—basically, the evolution of a game over time, through updates and seasonal content. They basically say, “Hey, this game can be a service for us, and we can keep making money off of it. And sure, maybe in the past we would have just shut down a project if it wasn’t working right out of the gate, but now we have the model of the money-gushing live-service game to justify our choice of keeping a game alive.” In other words, Concord’s really weak launch left it with no chance of becoming a live-service game, which is the new baseline for AAA titles.
I’ve observed similar scenarios unfold with other games, and the takeaway is always the same: that premature launches can be quite costly. With an industry that’s moving a mile a minute, there’s no doubt that devs feel the pressure to meet their deadlines. And when they miss, well, they “turn in late work.” But in the long run, it’s better to be late and great rather than to make the mistake of hitting your deadline only to deliver an experience that’s less than satisfying. The best that can be said about Concord is that it serves as a cautionary tale. It’s a reminder that even top-tier studios can miss their targets—and in today’s gaming market, we’re not handing out any participation trophies for even trying.
Now that Concord is no longer in play, many are left speculating about what this means for the future of Boston-based Sony’s approach to making multiplayer games. Historically, the Japanese electronics giant has not been known for its multiplayer experiences. While flagship titles such as The Last of Us, Horizon Zero Dawn, and God of War have earned massive followings, thanks in no small part to their narrative heft and world-building prowess, none of them has what you might call an online component. And the decision to pull Concord has many wondering if the studio is truly committed to the multiplayer experience.
To begin with, continual support and updates are necessary to maintain player interest. Take, for instance, the games Fortnite or Warzone. Their developers add new content all the time, alter game mechanics, and react to player feedback in almost real-time. Somehow, Concord was supposed to accomplish the same sort of thing on roughly the same sort of scale. But Sony seemed not to realize that part of the ongoing resource commitment has to do with player interaction, part of which is player engagement through the conversation of ongoing player interaction. By developing Concord in the shadow of its competitor, Fallout 76, a game that had unravelled in the public eye, I suspect Sony had too much of a negative take on Concord before it even swung open the doors to its player community.
When a game gets yanked from the market this quickly, it is bound to provoke some strong reactions from the gaming community. And when Concord got shut down, that strong reaction surfaced online, with players expressing their anger over the ill fate of the game they loved.
The diehard fans, those who spent bucks on the game and many hours enjoying it, were particularly furious. To them, Sony’s pulling the plug on Concord was an insult. They saw it as a sign of bad faith that came just months after the studio had asked for gamers to help populate the world of Concord (which we did by buying it).
The players who adored the game were crushed, while the broader gaming community pretty much moved on. Now, Concord feels like it’s heading down that exact same road. One key takeaway here is that communication can make or break a situation like this. Gamers can be remarkably forgiving if they feel like someone is at least trying to address their concerns. However, when a company simply turns off the lights and provides no real explanation, it leaves a lot of gaming enthusiasts feeling salty. Sony’s official statements about Concord have been very light on details.
This moves story-wise from the Concord side to the Sony side. Why is Sony talking in such vague terms? And why is it seemingly not addressing player concerns about sunny-day shutdowns?
What Could Have Saved Concord?
Hindsight is always 20/20, right? What exactly did Sony do to ensure that its multiplayer game Concord didn’t end up as a footnote in gaming history? From where I stand, several key facets of the game and its marketing could have been executed differently, yielding a wholly different outcome. Let’s start with the release window. Flooding the already saturated market with as many as three major titles (we’ll get to the other two later) in the span of a few months was bound to lead one of the games, if not all three, to underperform sales-wise.
One thing that could have helped is instituting a beta-testing period of longer duration. I can’t emphasize enough how important community feedback is during a game’s development. Players need time to absorb the game and provide meaningful feedback. If you look at something like Valorant, it spent a good number of months in beta. When the players came out of that experience, they had a lot of positive things to say, but they also had meaningful criticisms. You looked at something like Concord, and you thought, “Man, this thing might have benefited from a bit of pre-launch testing.” And then you looked at the content and thought, “Wait a minute, where’s the content in this game?”
In conclusion, better support after launch could have helped Concord. Sony patched a few things, but the response seemed more reactive than proactive. In successful multiplayer games, the dev team is always one step ahead, anticipating issues and squashing them before they can become full-blown problems. With Concord, the team seemed to be playing catch-up from day one, and by the time they’d started to glue the whole thing back together, many players had already left for greener pastures.
I don’t see this as a sign that Sony is done with making multiplayer games. They have the resources and personnel to make a successful one; they just need to refine their approach, and Concord’s an unfortunate experience to learn from.
For one, I believe they will exercise increased caution in launching a multiplayer game without thorough testing. They will probably take more time to build up hype with the community by using early access programs and closed/open betas. They will communicate more, as well, and not just about fixing bugs but about making sure the game has a solid foundation on which to stand once it goes on sale. There’s also the question of genre. Multiplayer shooters are incredibly competitive, and playing in that market is no small potatoes. If Sony’s launching a new multiplayer IP, it might want to consider other genres, like co-op RPGs, in which to find a niche.
In the final analysis, Concord’s brief and unsuccessful trip down the gaming industry’s path serves as a potent reminder of the potential for harshness inherent to that industry. A game can possess all the correct components—a capable and inspired team, a concept that tingles the spine, and a substantial publisher backing it—but if the execution and polish are absent, gamers will not hesitate to carry on like nothing ever happened. For Sony, this development represents a setback; it’s unfortunate. They’ve had many highs and lows over the years, and I’m confident that they’ll continue to explore and push the very boundaries of gaming—a discipline in which they pioneered many “firsts.” It’ll be fascinating to discover how they react to this dip and what sonic lessons they might learn.
Concord, however, will probably emerge as one of those “what might have been” narratives in the gaming world. Nevertheless, for those of us who were present when it illuminated the gaming industry for a brief time, Concord reminds us that even the biggest names in gaming are not safe from the pressures of today’s fast-moving market.
