A failed shooter Concord from Firewalk Studios and Sony Publisher encountered problems early in development. Details of the process were shared by a number of Western journalists, including a representative of Kotaku and a former IGN employee.
According to insiders, the development of Concord ultimately cost about $400 million, not including the cost of purchasing the Firewalk studio itself. At the same time, Sony had to invest at least half of it so that the game would even be minimally functional – the studio itself could not cope with this. Despite this, Sony was confident in the success of the shooter and sought to make it its own analogue of “Star Wars”, and the development was supported by the head of PlayStation Herman Hulst.
During development, the game suffered from “toxic positivity.” The studio was not allowed to criticize Concord at any stage of production, from concept art to gameplay elements. Many aspects of the game were then trashed by gamers after its release. Amid a wave of hate and malicious comments, Concord’s senior concept designer said that “people’s lives are at stake” because of the shooter’s failure, as Firewalk employees could lose their jobs. She also called for the hate to be directed at the executives, not the regular developers.
Concord was released on August 23. The game was available on PC and PS5. At the release, the peak online of the new product on Steam barely exceeded 600 people, after which the figures continued to fall even more. According to analysts, the shooter sold only 25 thousand copies. Two weeks after the release, the game was closed.
