Despite the efforts of gaming journalists to promote this live-service disaster to consumers, urging them to “give it a chance” despite its $40 price tag and some of the most ugly and progressive character designs in modern gaming, the game failed to attract buyers.
And now, it’s over. Sony has officially announced plans to shut down the live-service title, likely because its declining player numbers meant that server costs were becoming a financial burden. The online-only hero shooter, released for PlayStation 5 and PC on August 23rd, will be shutting down on September 6th.
In a blog post on Sony’s website, Ryan Ellis, the game director at Firewalk Studios, announced that anyone who purchased the $40 game would receive a full refund while the team decides “the best path forward” for its potential return.
Hopefully, that never happens, as Concord will now go down in history as possibly the quickest live-service game to shut down, lasting two weeks. It also serves as a warning to other Western and major Japanese studios that are obsessed with LGBT representation, focused on showcasing “marginalized” ethnic groups, and treat the political messages of ESG and DEI as if they were gospel.
However, the game was abruptly canceled just before its intended release, following a beta test. Concord did make it to release but quickly became Sony’s largest commercial failure in the video game industry, which is struggling with layoffs and financial flops due to politicized projects influenced by hedge fund-backed ideologies.
With eight years of development and $200 million spent, Concord was supposed to be a AAA live-service experience, similar to Sony’s surprise hit, Helldivers 2. However, Concord failed to even reach 700 concurrent players on Steam.
Despite the significant losses with Concord, Sony remains committed to pushing identity politics and DEI initiatives in their live-service games. The company is moving forward with the release of FairGame$, a PvP heist game centered on the theme of “eating the rich,” featuring the usual array of inclusive and unconventional character designs typical of modern gaming.
As Black game developer Del Walker has pointed out, game developers fixated on DEI and ESG initiatives deliberately stifled his creative process, particularly when trying to create characters of color that aren’t batshit ugly.
As it turns out “diversity and inclusivity” isn’t genuinely about representation or uplifting so-called “marginalized” audiences, instead, these initiatives tokenize individuals based on appearance and fixtures, with a preference for portraying them as unattractive to boost ESG scores and help the liberal feminists within the industry with their poor self-esteem.
Sony also plans to release another Games-as-a-Service (GaaS) title in the near future, Marathon, developed by Bungie.
Despite being announced in May 2023, there has been no gameplay footage or additional details shared beyond a CGI trailer. Marathon will focus on PvP extraction gameplay, where players will take on the roles of diverse and ugly-looking cybernetic mercenaries known as “runners.”
Like Concord and FairGame$, Marathon will not include a single-player campaign and will be online-only. Nevertheless, Sony will likely charge $40 for these titles, which seem destined to face the same fate as Concord.
Sony’s failure is quite amusing, as the death of Concord significantly undermines Sony’s strategy of pushing these “woke” live-service games to the masses, launching simultaneously on PS5 and PC.
An ESG-driven ideology is a colossal failure, as many games developed in collaboration with DEI advocates, like Sweet Baby Inc., have quickly become some of the biggest financial failures in the gaming industry with such games as the Saints Row Reboot, Forspoken and Suicide Squad focusing on anti-capitalist themes, promote LGBT narratives, feature homosexual romances or center around ugly “diverse” character designs.
It’s hardly surprising that these games continue to flounder in the open market. Concord has been pulled from sale less than two weeks after its release, with the game set to shut down on September 6th, so mark your calendars.
As for the future, it’s likely that Firewalk Studios will either be shut down or face significant layoffs, leaving a small number of remaining employees to be reassigned within Sony’s network of subsidiaries. There, they will probably continue to work on other upcoming live-service projects like Marathon or FairGame$, which seem poised for a similar fate.
