Ex-Firewalk Studios developers remain divided on where the fault truly lies when it comes to Concord's sunset

It has been one year since the abrupt shutdown of Sony-backed multiplayer Concord, which became known as gaming's biggest flops. In a recent interview, Firewalk Studio developers opened up about the project’s highs and lows.

During the latest episode of the A Life Well Wasted podcast’s episode “Game Over”, Robert Ashley interviewed 11 ex-Firewalk staff members who recounted their time at the Seattle-based studio, which Sony acquired in 2023 before it shut down in October 2024, following the game’s demise.

Firewalk was founded in 2020 by veterans from Bungie and Activision. During the interview, one developer stated: “Every creative endeavor is a gamble, but from when I first came in four years ago, it was like ‘it’s too big to fail, there’s so much behind this.’ Even if things go poorly on launch, it’s gonna be ok, and we’ll have one year’s runway, two years’ runway or something like that to right the ship.”

The developers seemed at odds surrounding the game's shutdown for a project that was battered the weeks prior, while others remain “truly heartbroken that the game wasn’t being given a chance to survive,” pushing back against the idea that the Concord “was the greatest flop of all time. I don’t feel it deserves that. I think gamers missed out.”

The panel of the former developers agreed that communication wasn’t strong from the get-go, with one developer noting that Firewalk, “simply did a bad job communicating what their goal with the game was going to be. It should’ve been established well in advance of its cinematic reveal.”

An interesting take about the entire affair was the admission that Concord’s “aesthetics and characters didn’t resonate with players,” with the developer adding, “it taught me something important, there’s something worse than making a bad game, and that’s making an uncool one.”

While the developers praised Firewalks as “a good place to work with a strong sense of camaraderie and shared a passion for the FPS game they were creating, they didn’t hesitate to admit early  “red flags” amid the leadership’s vision, which was still executed with “a high degree of quality and accuracy.”

The game went into detail about Concord’s troubled journey, from its reveal at the PlayStation Showcase in 2023, which garnered widespread criticism for the game’s outdated design, a beta in June 2024 that saw an uninspiring turnout, peaking at 2,388 concurrent players despite being free on Steam. 

Concord launched on August 23, 2024, for the PS5 and PC for $39.99 and was aiming to be the next big hero-shooter with high-quality cinematics for rich storytelling, and even a dedicated episode in Amazon’s Secret Level Anthology series.

The game averaged under 700 concurrent players on Steam within its first week and totaled fewer than 25,000 sales across both platforms. Within two weeks in September 2024, game director Ryan Ellis announced that Concord’s servers would go offline on September 6, with full refunds being issued, and the game being delisted from Steam and PlayStation Store.