“Many players know about Concord, and what happened with that project,” wrote the developer. “Concord failed to inspire players, and the messages was heard loud and clear. It was gut wrenching to see our project fail, and be the laughing stock of many online. I have learned that failure, is what drives me to succeed. No one feels as bad as the people who put their time on the line, hoping it will entertain the masses of gamers across the globe. I am not asking for pity, or even sympathy because, after all this is the name of the game, you win or lose. The margin for success is very thin. I took a chance, and lost.”

The developer also talks about being excitement after getting a look at Marathon, as well as seeing the people working hard at making the game.

“Some of you probably smell blood in the water, and probably want to roast me for no longer lurking, and exposing myself,” they continued. “I hope you don’t, and see that people create these projects, and work very hard to be the next big thing. Seeing the faces of the developers on the Bungie stream, gave me hope, and excitement for what is to come for Marathon.”

“I commend them for taking a chance, trying something foreign to them, that isn’t proven, nor guaranteed to succeed. It takes a lot of courage.”

Further in the Reddit thread, the developer spoke about how players shouldn’t already be judging a game before its release. In a comment, they wrote that “to call [Marathon] a failure before it’s even out, is wild to me.”

Details about Marathon were revealed over the previous weekend with a gameplay showcase. Among the things revealed was the fact that Marathon will be coming to PC, PS5 and Xbox Series X/S on September 23, with a closed alpha test starting on April 23. At launch, the extraction shooter will feature 3 maps and 6 playable characters, referred to in-game as Runners.

In an interview, game director Joe Ziegler spoke about wanting to give players the polish they expect from a shooter developed by Bungie with layers of gameplay that will help players tell their own emergent stories through wins and losses in the gameplay sandbox.

“I do think that the ceiling could rise from where it’s at currently,” Ziegler said. “And part of that is I think that we have a whole generation of people who are growing up in sandbox experiences. We have [battle royale] players, we have players who are playing other sandbox shooters as their main game as they were growing up. And for them, they’re creating a lot of these stories, but a lot of the stories that they’re creating are framed by the systems that those games embrace, right?”

Marathon will not be a free-to-play game. Bungie, however, has not yet confirmed its price.

In the latest Game Mess podcast, GiantBomb’s Jeff Grubb revealed that the cancelled live-service titles from Bluepoint Games and Bend Studio were reportedly due to Concord. “This happened because of Concord. Like, this should be clear. That’s what I’ve been told.

“Sony has been shell-shocked from Concord, and now they’re going around to every studio and reassessing every project. If it’s a live-service project, there’s a lot of friction against it, preventing it from getting a chance to come out.”

He also reports that these were the main projects from both studios. Alongside Concord, they join the likes of cancelled multiplayer titles for The Last of Us and Marvel’s Spider-Man, the rumored Twisted Metal reboot and Sony London’s fantasy RPG.

Sony noted that the cancellations won’t result in studio closures, but it’s unknown if there will be layoffs. Plans are underway to discuss the future, so stay tuned for further updates.

Though Firewalk Studios said it was looking at feedback to improve the experience, Sony made the call to permanently shelve the title and shut down the studio. In a Q&A session following the company’s earnings, COO and CFO Hiroki Totoki discussed (transcription via VGC) the title’s failure and how the studio is still “in the process of learning.”

“With regards to new IP, of course, you don’t know the result until you actually try it. So for us, for our reflection, we probably need to have a lot of gates, including user testing or internal evaluation, and the timing of such gates. And then we need to bring them forward, and we should have done those gates much earlier than we did.

“Also, we have a siloed organization, so going beyond the boundaries of those organizations in terms of development and also sales, I think that could have been much smoother.

“And then going forward, in our own titles and in third-party titles, we do have many different windows. And we want to be able to select the right and optimal window so that we can deploy them on our own platform without cannibalization, so that we can maximize our performance in terms of title launches. That’s all I have.”

Prior to this, Sadahiko Hayakawa, senior VP for finance and investor relations, acknowledged Concord shutting down and Helldivers 2 becoming a hit. He said the company gained a “lot of experience and learned a lot from both.”

“We intend to share the lessons learned from our successes and failures across our studios, including in the areas of title development management as well as the process of continually adding expanded content and scaling the service after its release so as to strengthen our development management system.

“We intend to build on an optimum title portfolio during the current mid-range plan period that combines single-player games – which are our strengths and which have a higher predictability of becoming hits due to our proven IP – with live-service games that pursue upside while taking on a certain amount of risk upon release.”

Sony said it will release “major single-player titles” yearly after Ghost of Yōtei (which launches in 2025). It’s also making “steady progress” with new titles and improvements to its “live service game processes.” Sony has live service titles like Bungie’s Marathon and Haven Studios’ Fairgame$ in the works, but it’s yet to announce other big single-player titles. Stay tuned for more details in the coming months.

Within a mere two weeks of launch, following disappointing sales and lukewarm critical reception, Concord was pulled offline, and everyone who bought the game was refunded. Firewalk and Sony’s position at the time was that they would put their heads together and try and figure out a different future for the game- which implied that maybe there was a future for the game. Many assumed that maybe it would return in the form of a free-to-play shooter, but really, the more you thought about it, the clearer it became that Concord was likely not going to get a second shot. Not after going down as one of the biggest and most high-profile first-party failures the games industry has ever seen.

Now, Sony has made the announcement that Firewalk Studios is shutting down, with mobile developer Neon (previously known as Savage Game Studios) also being shuttered, and it’s an absolute shame for just so many reasons. First and foremost, it’s a shame, of course, that multiple hundreds of people are losing their jobs, adding to the already several thousands of job cuts and layoffs this industry has seen over the last couple of years. It’s also a shame to see a new IP bombing this hard. Gaming, like any creative medium, desperately needs a constant influx of new ideas, so to see a major new first-party IP failing in this fashion is never great. You just know that a bunch of c-suite executives out there are going to decide based on Concord’s failure that maybe it might not be worth the risk to make big bets on completely new properties- which is the opposite of the direction we want to be headed in.

Beyond that, however, Firewalk Studios’ closure is also indicative of a much larger issue at PlayStation, and yet another glaring example of the cavalcade of poor decisions the company has made these last few years. The PS5 generation as a whole has seen Sony at its most frustrating in multiple ways. Yes, we have obviously had a number of great first-party games over the course of this generation, from Horizon Forbidden West and God of War Ragnarok to Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 and Astro Bot, among others, but though the company has continued to deliver quality games, that has unfortunately gone hand-in-hand with disastrous mismanagement in other areas.

Sony acquired Firewalk Studios just about a year and a half ago, in April of 2023, prior to which it had already agreed to fund and publish the studio’s debut title, so clearly, it believed in Concord, or at least what it could become. Where that confidence came from, however, is a real headscratcher, because knowing what we now know of Concord, we can say with equal confidence that though it wasn’t without its own fair share of gameplay strengths, overall, it clearly wasn’t equipped for long-term success- or even short-term success, as it would turn out. No, it was a flawed $40 Overwatch clone in 2024, in a market that’s already flooded with similar live service shooters.

Banking so hard on Concord was in and of itself a mistake, then, but even more egregious is how Sony has chosen to deal with the fallout. Firewalk is being shuttered less than two years out from being acquired, hundreds of people are losing their jobs, and the game they spent years working on was allowed to remain online for just two weeks. And let’s not forget Neon Koi, the mobile studio that was acquired just a couple of years ago as part of Sony’s big mobile push- which, as per co-CEO Hermen Hulst, still remains an important part of the company’s strategy, in spite of the fact that Neon Koi is being shuttered, and its game cancelled. Looking at Concord and its fallout with Firewalk, it’s hard to think of examples of other publishers handling a rough situation with this kind of bumbling idiocy and lack of grace. Truly, PlayStation leadership has made an absolute mockery of itself.

Unsurprisingly, the conversation once again takes us back to Sony’s misguided live service ambitions. We’re barely a couple of games into those plans, and the list of failures is already long. Concord shelved, and Firewalk shuttered. The Last of Us Online cancelled, and Naughty Dog looking nowhere close to releasing a new game this generation. London Studios shuttered, and its live service game cancelled. Partnered AAA indie studio Deviation Games shuttered, before it could even announce its game. The only success Sony has seen in this arena so far has been Helldivers 2, which is more of a surprise success than one that the company worked for and planned around- and even that Sony has somehow managed to fumble with its PSN requirements on PC, illustrating just how to snap defeat from the jaws of victory.

You can, of course, understand from a financial perspective why Sony wanted other streams of revenue besides its big budget single-player titles, but Firewalk’s closure and the disastrous decision-making surrounding Concord are perfectly emblematic of how terribly the company has executed on those plans. In his internal email to PlayStation employees where he announced the shuttering of Firewalk and Neon Koi, PlayStation’s co-CEO Hermen Hulst touched on how the company will learn from the failings of Concord as it moves forward, but it’s hard to imagine this version of PlayStation having the capacity to learn more its mistakes.

This version of PlayStation is so entrenched in its idiotic vision for the future that it feels like it’s only ever going to make terrible decision after terrible decision. Like shuttering a studio that you should never have bought less than two years after buying it. Like laying off 900 people earlier in the year. Like spending over $300 million on Spider-Man 2, watching it enjoy widespread critical and commercial success, and then laying off a bunch of people at Insomniac anyway. Like investing multiple billions into Bungie, only to watch the studio’s condition go from bad to worse in the blink of an eye. Like adopting a collective policy of squeezing as much money out of your audience as possible, with increased prices for games, consoles, accessories, or subscription services. Like selling a pro console for $700 and refusing to sell it with a disc drive, or hell, even a stand.

And that’s just scratching the surface. This is the version of PlayStation we’re stuck with, and the Concord debacle is yet another stark reminder of that. Obviously, you want to hope that Sony will indeed learn from these huge and costly mistakes – and boy have these mistakes been huge and costly – but they had to make a string of mind-numbingly stupid decisions to find themselves in this position, leaving you to wonder whether they even have the capacity to know what the right path forward is.

Note: The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of, and should not be attributed to, GamingBolt as an organization.

This is according to two sources reportedly “familiar with the agreement,” but interestingly, the amount didn’t cover Concord’s development. It also didn’t include Sony acquiring Firewalk Studios or the IP rights. While there’s a baseline for how much was invested in the game, the total is still anyone’s guess.

Concord was available for PS5 and PC, retailing for $39.99. Check out our review, where we gave it a 6 out of 10, praising the gunplay and visuals while criticizing the hero kits, lackluster content, and distinct lack of imagination. It reportedly sold about 25,000 units at launch, becoming one of Sony’s biggest first-party failures in years.

Firewalk Studios was acquired by PlayStation in April last year, and earlier this year, in August, the studio released its debut title in Concord. The multiplayer first-person shooter was, however, met with lukewarm reception and disastrous sales, and just two weeks after release, it was pulled offline, while everyone who bought the game was refunded.

In an internal email sent to employees, PlayStation’s co-CEO Hermen Hulst wrote, “Certain aspects of Concord were exceptional, but others did not land with enough players, and as a result we took the game offline. We have spent considerable time these past few months exploring all our options.

“After much thought, we have determined the best path forward is to permanently sunset the game and close the studio.  I want to thank all of Firewalk for their craftsmanship, creative spirit and dedication.

“The PvP first person shooter genre is a competitive space that’s continuously evolving, and unfortunately, we did not hit our targets with this title. We will take the lessons learned from Concord and continue to advance our live service capabilities to deliver future growth in this area.”

Neon Koi, meanwhile, was acquired by PlayStation in 2022, back when the developer was still known as Savage Game Studios, as part of Sony’s efforts to expand into mobile gaming. Hulst says mobile remains an area that Sony will continue to focus on, but is now looking to do in more strategic fashion, as a result of which Neon Koi and the mobile action game it was working on are both being shut down.

“Expanding beyond PlayStation devices and crafting engaging online experiences alongside our single-player games are key focal areas for us as we evolve our revenue streams,” Hulst wrote in his email. “We need to be strategic, though, in bringing our games to new platforms and recognize when our games fall short of meeting player expectations.

“While mobile remains a priority growth area for the Studio Business, we are in the very early stage of our mobile efforts. To achieve success in this area we need to concentrate on titles that are in-line with PlayStation Studios’ pedigree and have the potential to reach more players globally.

“With this re-focused approach, Neon Koi will close, and its mobile action game will not be moving forward. I want to express my gratitude to everyone at Neon Koi for their hard work and endless passion to innovate.”

“Some” employees from both studios will be offered roles across other internal PlayStation studios, according to Hulst.

“Both decisions were given serious thought, and ultimately, we feel they are the right ones to strengthen the organization,” his email reads. “Neon Koi and Firewalk were home to many talented individuals, and we will work to find placement for some of those impacted within our global community of studios where possible.

“I am a big believer in the benefits of embracing creative experimentation and developing new IP. However, growing through sustainable financials, especially in a challenged economic environment is critical.”

As per a report by TrueTrophies – which cites gameplay sample data from over 3.1 million active PSN accounts – Until Dawn saw 28 percent fewer players on PS5 at launch than the disastrous Concord, which launched earlier this year and was on the market for just two weeks before being pulled offline and taken off sale.

In comparison, the biggest single-player launch that the PS5 has allegedly seen so far this year was The Last of Us Part 2 Remastered, which had 98.5 percent more players than the Until Dawn remake at launch, the report claims.

The horror title is also available on PC, but hasn’t done too much better there either, having peaked at just over 2,000 concurrent players on Steam, making it one of Sony’s worst-performing games on the platform to date.

Critical reception for Until Dawn has been mixed, with the remake sitting at a Metacritic score of 70 after 31 reviews. Our own review of the remake was more positive. Awarding it a score of 8/10, we said, “Though it’s hard not to see the validity of criticisms over its pricing and and questions over whether it even needed to be made, the Until Dawn remake is ultimately a solid and enhanced new version of a modern horror classic.” Read the full review through here.

An Until Dawn movie is due out next year, having recently wrapped filming. Reportedly, a sequel to Until Dawn is also in development at Firesprite. Read more on that through here.

However, as the past many years have proven, it’s often the exception rather than the rule. You usually get one shot to make an impression, and that’s it. Anthem, Marvel’s Avengers, Redfall, Skull and Bones, Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League, Overkill’s The Walking Dead  – the list of failures stretches on and on. Add Firewalk Studios’ Concord to the list as well.

For those out of the loop or who forgot (and who can blame them), the multiplayer shooter launched on August 23rd for PS5 and PC before being removed from sale and servers shut down on September 6th. Aside from the underwhelming critical response, sales were seemingly in the gutter – analyst Simon Carless estimated about 25,000 units sold.

To say this is Sony’s biggest failure in years would be an understatement – it easily ranks among the greatest first-party fumbles in gaming history. And that’s without factoring in the eight-year development cycle, as revealed by lead character designer Jon Weisnewski. Or the fact that it sold at $40, which, despite falling short of the $70 price tag of many triple-A titles this generation, is still $40 too much compared to the competition.

Of course, Concord isn’t cancelled. Right? Director Ryan Ellis said the team is exploring options, “including those that will better reach our players.” Nothing concrete was promised, but the team would keep players, or however many were aboard for the ride, updated. This seemingly indicates some plans for a comeback at some point. Maybe Sony had seen the error of its ways and is entertaining a free-to-play model, however that would work. Perhaps it realized the fallacy of launching another multiplayer shooter with hero shooter elements in a saturated market and opted for something different.

Unfortunately, the truth, or at least reports of it, is far harsher than it seems, with Ellis allegedly stepping down as game director, according to three sources who spoke to Kotaku’s Ethan Gach. On top of this, there’s a general pall of not knowing what’s next for the studio. While pitches are reportedly being explored for concepts that are “completely different” and internal speculation about the studio acting as a co-development studio for other first-party projects, there are also fears of Firewalk being shut down. This is to the extent that some have already left the studio while others are preparing for the worst.

It’s easy to see why there would be such fears. Firewalk is allegedly one of Sony’s “more expensive” studios on a per-head basis (with 150 to 170 employees in total). Concord’s failure is one thing, but the publisher also had its fair share of layoffs this year. Then there’s the fact that it’s scaled back its live service plans, as seen with Sony London’s closing and the cancellation of its fantasy RPG.

Even the shuttering of The Last of Us multiplayer title reportedly wasn’t a “bloodless endeavor” per Bloomberg’s Jason Schreier revealed on the Friends Per Second podcast that “heads were rolling at Sony as a result of that one” and it had a four-year development cycle compared to Concord’s eight. Long story short, it’s not looking good for Firewalk.

One could go on about the game’s flaws, from the character designs and lackluster kits to dull features like Crew Bonuses and persistent deployables. The developer also pushed out weekly cinematic vignettes – cutscenes that expanded on the cast, even if they weren’t necessarily telling a grand narrative. Nifty in concept but ultimately inconsequential and another drag on the budget. Imagine Firewalk making weeks and weeks of those vignettes that will never see the light of day. How well that will look when factoring in development costs remains to be seen.

While Concord’s sales are abysmal, and no title with such a long development cycle couldn’t have spent tens of millions, there’s been some back and forth on the game’s budget. A recent report by Colin Moriarty indicated that it cost $400 million and that a culture of “toxic positivity” was present that ignored any negative feedback. Take it with massive grains of salt, but while Ethan Gach couldn’t confirm the budget, he did corroborate the toxic positivity.

“Some sources I’ve spoken with blamed a head-in-the-sand mentality carried over from the studio’s Bungie roots. A sense the game would come together because the team was too good to fail.” As someone who followed the Destiny series for almost its entire lifespan, I find it frustrating to see this approach reportedly festering among other studios. Talk to anyone who waited years for the series to get its act together, even among all the allegations of toxicity, the constant over-monetization of the shooter, or the lackluster content releases.

Bungie’s hubris has come back, time and again, to drag the studio down, as seen with Destiny 2’s Lightfall. Such was the negative response to the expansion that sales of The Final Shape were impacted, leading to more layoffs and a significant rethink of the franchise’s plan moving forward.

It’s easy to see a similar philosophy on Concord but without the benefit of anything to make it shine among the competition. Still, you have to wonder how many changes the title has undergone throughout its many years; how much feedback from players and internally was ultimately ignored because the team’s leadership allegedly thought it knew better. You would think the industry would know better after years of failures in the live service space, multiplayer or otherwise, but apparently not.

Where Concord goes from here, if anywhere, is anyone’s guess, but when Firewalk is reportedly pessimistic about its fate, any comeback looks unlikely. Sony could dismantle the studio and assimilate some of its employees to work on other projects, which would be a decent outcome. The artists, graphics designers, programmers, Q&A testers, and more shouldn’t suffer because of the mistakes made by management.

Maybe Fairgame$ could benefit from some of that multiplayer “expertise,” but that’s another headache the publisher will have to worry about in due time. Even with its live service plan in shambles and several projects cancelled, it hasn’t gone out of its way to provide reassurance. No, “We learned from our mistakes and are focusing on single-player titles,” or even promises that future live service games would be handled differently.

Instead, we have a $700 mid-gen “refresh,” rumored remasters of Horizon Zero Dawn and Days Gone in the works, and still no announcements for what the future holds regarding brand-new first-party titles, let alone additions in established franchises.

Is it enough to hit the “Panic” button and say that arrogant Sony is back and making all the wrong decisions? Of course not, especially when you look at its success over recent years (if not the past three decades). However, if Concord’s handling and failure have proven anything, it’s that despite Sony’s success, the company – just like any other major publisher or console manufacturer – is far from infallible.

Note: The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of, and should not be attributed to, GamingBolt as an organization.

As per Last Stand Media founder Colin Moriarty, Concord had a budget of about $400 million, with “most” of it being spent by Sony, making it the biggest ever first-party PlayStation release in terms of budget. In comparison, Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 had a budget of $315 million, while The Last of Us Part 2 and Horizon Forbidden West both had $200 million budgets each. Moriarty claimed on a recent episode of the Sacred Symbols podcast that he was told about the same by a developer who worked on the game. 

Allegedly, by the time Concord entered the alpha stage of development, which was in early 2023, about $200 million had already been spent on the game. The game was, however, in “a laughable shape” at this point (around the time it was announced in May last year), with work not having been done on major elements of the game like onboarding and monetization.

Significant work also had to be outsourced to external studios. To get the game to an acceptable level of quality, Sony decided to spend another $200 million on it at this point. Moriarty goes on to claim that the total figure of $400 million also does not include the money that it cost for Sony to acquire Concord developer Firewalk Studios, which happened in April last year.

As per Moriarty, Concord’s development was plagued with issues of “toxic positivity”, which meant negative feedback on the game was ignored, with PlayStation higher-ups – specifically, current co-CEO of PlayStation, Hermen Hulst – believing the game had the potential to be a massive success for the company, maybe even on the level of something like Star Wars. Allegedly, the game was internally referred to as “the future of PlayStation”.

Prior to Concord being shut down, reports claimed that the game had managed to sell just 25,000 units upon release. Since the game was pulled offline, Sony has made no announcement regarding its future, or the future of Firewalk.

As per a recent report, Concord’s director, Ryan Ellis, has stepped down from his role following the game’s shuttering. Read more on that through here.

Now, a Kotaku report has claimed that Concord’s game director Ryan Ellis – who was previously creative director on Destiny 2 at Bungie before leaving in 2017 – has stepped down from his role. Though he remains at developer Firewalk Studios, he has now moved into a support role.

The report also claims, however, that the future of the game and the studio itself remains in limbo. When Concord was shut down, it was confirmed that Firewalk and Sony would be internally discussing options for the game’s future, though Kotaku’s report cites three anonymous sources who say Sony hasn’t yet said anything, and that Firewalk’s employees remain in the dark.

As per the report, some employees have left the studio, while others are expecting mass layoffs, or even a full studio closure- though it’s important to note that these are internal speculations, with nothing yet confirmed. Either way, some staff remain pessimistic that Concord will return, with speculation rife over whether the studio might develop something entirely new next, or perhaps be used as a co-development team on one of Sony’s many ongoing first-party projects.

PlayStation announced in April last year that it had acquired Firewalk Studios, adding it to its portfolio of first-party studios.