These other failed games prove that Concord’s destiny was predetermined

Concord was PlayStation’s biggest ever failure. Monumental development costs amounted to virtually zero profits, and within two weeks PlayStation had closed the shutters on the game saying that all purchases will be refunded imminently. The hero shooter was developed by Firewalk Studios, which PlayStation acquired just last year to “help grow [their] live service operations.” What happened to Concord, and what can we learn from games that suffered similar fates in the past few years?

Where it all went wrong for Concord

Do you remember Concord’s marketing campaign? Neither do I. At this year’s State of Play, PlayStation revealed Concord’s first cinematic trailer. As soon as it released; it slapped against the floor. It was a CGI video of an alien cowboy firing a gun at a bottle of hot sauce with dialogue lifted straight out of Disney’s scrap pile. It ended with one of the characters saying “you sound ridiculous,” entirely fitting for the attempt to make audiences care about a group of characters with no unique identity whatsoever.

The video amassed a staggeringly low 300,000 views on YouTube, in-part due to the fact it was a game developed by a relatively unknown studio in a genre notorious for its failures.

That same day, we were treated to a gameplay trailer. “Concord is a 5v5 first person shooter,” Studio Head Tony Hsu starts. This emphasised another failure on Firewalk’s behalf – developing a hero shooter in today’s environment. On paper, the gameplay didn’t look terrible. Visuals may have been flat and uninspiring, a long shot from Overwatch or Marvel Rivals’ styles, but systems looked as though they were functioning, and at times, it looked fun. Unfortunately, the trust in developers working on hero shooters was at an all time low.

The day Concord was first revealed, it was doomed.

Blizzard’s approach to Overwatch had soured the genre, despite them having effectively created it (with a helping hand from Team Fortress 2). It epitomised live-service slop; create a small game with a handful of heroes, you only need ten, then maps, then game mode design. After it begins working, you ship it out in betas. It launches, and season passes, cosmetics, and the introduction of new heroes then becomes the incentive, and the game then becomes a production line or a marketing tool. That’s exactly what happened with Overwatch 2, as players realised that the game was nothing new, and they’d played it all before. The hero shooter is rarely ever more than a product, and this generally accepted idea is exactly why Concord failed.

Within three months of the trailers, Concord had gone through its open beta phase, a month later it was launched, and then two weeks after that, closed.

How its ‘predecessors’ foretold Concord’s failure

There are a few other games out there to prove that Concord was always going to fail. The first that comes to mind is Battleborn from Gearbox Studios. Another hero shooter, this one ate up the same League of Legends influenced art style that has taken over gaming recently. Unfortunately for Battleborn it launched just before Overwatch meaning that, when Blizzard’s title was released, all attention was diverted.

People don’t have the time, energy or money for multiple live-service games, let alone multiple hero shooters. With Marvel Rivals and Overwatch already dominating the space, attempting to break in with Concord was always a battle destined for failure.

Though not a hero shooter, Anthem’s release taught us plenty too. It was riddled with bugs though that’s nothing new in today’s environment. In fact, its biggest sin was the brutally bland concept executed with no character or affection. When I saw Concord’s first cinematic trailer, all I could think about was Anthem’s. It’s tough to sell a game based on its characters, visual design, and its drama, yet that’s what both PlayStation and EA attempted. There’s almost a confusion with these trailers, as though they’re attempting to sell it as something much more grand than it is. It’s an FPS, please, show me first person shooting and I’ll be happy.

Anthem saw a briefly successful launch, before being shunned by audiences pretty fast. It’s still running to this day, but it’s by no means EA’s favourite child. The sad thing is that Anthem could have been good, just that its execution didn’t meet the mark.

Furthermore, EA’s attempt to get Bioware to create a live-service FPS made no sense. With Mass Effect and Dragon Age under its belt, why leave that all behind for a shiny industry trend? Surely after this mistake, it wouldn’t happen again, right?

Enter Warner Bros with Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League, which was met with a surge in readers trying to figure out how to refund it soon after release – it was that bad. Its developer, Rocksteady, is known for some of the best action RPGs in the industry. The Arkham games are unequivocally loved by players, with the exception of the live-service entry. Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League was a game that was never meant to have been made, much like Redfall, Concord, and to some extent, Anthem. It didn’t make sense, and the publishers absolutely couldn’t see that.

It’s reported that KtJL cost nearly $200m to develop, and within months it was being given away for free as part of Prime Gaming. Terrible gameplay, bugs and emphasis on microtransactions were to blame.

There are a few things we can observe from past live-service failures and how they all relate to Concord; hero shooter oversaturation, terrible marketing and publishers choosing the wrong developer. In each case of these live-service games failing, the onus has always fallen on the publisher rather than developer.

It’s endemic to the gaming industry’s biggest problem at the moment, derivative games designed to fill a financial black hole. PlayStation has not been a big player in online games until recently. Its biggest hits of late have been God of War, Insomniac’s Spider-Man, Horizon, The Last of Us, and other single-player-first games. I would argue that Destiny and Helldivers are the only online-first series to have taken off from them in recent years. Seeing the financial success of those, alongside EA’s, Blizzard’s, and Epic’s, provoked the publisher to forsake its own design philosophy. It felt left out, and in doing so had reacted poorly. Now, it’s cost them millions, its reputation as a publisher is laughable, and worst of all, it’s probably cost the developers at Fireshrine Studios their entire livelihood.

Unfortunately, Concord isn’t the last time a big publisher makes a mistake like this. It’s happened several times before, as evidenced above. There will be more and more live-service slop hitting stores in the next few years, and they will continue to eat away at money that could instead be invested into games that actually have a place on our screens.