If you wanted to get your hands on the new shooter video game Concordyour expectations will have to be revised. Firewalk studio announced its offline on September 6, two weeks after its release, due to failure to attract players.
The failure was resounding since the Firewalk Studios team invested some 100 million dollars and eight years of development in this video game.
On the Metacritic aggregator, video game critics give it a score of 62/100. Players, for their part, give it 1.8/10. Among its main weak points, we count a production that struggles to distinguish itself from its competitors with generic characters and poorly designed maps.
On the digital PC gaming platform Steam, the maximum number of people to have launched a game of this game simultaneously has never exceeded 700.
This result is even less brilliant than that of the video game The Lord of the Rings : Gollumconsidered by several specialist sites to be the worst video game production of 2023. Concord thus becomes a prime candidate to win this title in 2024.
The developer, however, is not giving up. The director of ConcordRyan Ellis, said in a blog post that he is exploring options, including ones that will better reach players.
Some specialist sites mention a free version of the game (free-to-play), a niche in which video games such as Valuing, Fortnite et Overwatch 2 are already well established.
Not an isolated case
If the unplugging of a video game two weeks after its release leaves a lasting impression, the case of Concord is just one failure among others.
The fighting game Multiversus Warner Bros.’s The Last of Us Part 2, which was only available in early access at the time, was taken offline for nearly a year before being reborn. Amazon and Bandai Namco recently announced the end of their massively multiplayer role-playing video game Blue Protocol a year after its release in Japan and its western version was cancelled due to lack of enthusiasm.
These are just the video games that have seen the light of day, as several well-known studios have ended production on many titles in recent times.
100% customer refund
The designer of Concord has announced that it will refund every copy of the game sold. Those who purchased the title on the PlayStation Store will be refunded through the original payment method used. If the purchase was made on Steam or the Epic Games Store, the refund will be processed in the coming days.
For those who purchased a physical version of the game, they should follow the retailer’s refund process.
Once refunded, players will lose access to the game, the blog post states.
We will keep you updated and thank you again. [toutes les personnes] who have joined us in the Concord galaxy, said game director Ryan Ellis.
