After the unexpected success of Helldivers 2, Sony’s latest venture into cross-platform live service games, Concord, has arrived to a reception of tumbleweeds.
As yet another entry in an already crowded field of live service hero shooters, Concord struggled to stand out, with its strong focus on queer representation and DEI-focused character designs contributing to its downfall. The game’s poor performance was likely exacerbated by the dismal player numbers seen during its open beta phase.
Only a few hundred PC players were willing to pay $40 for a live service hero shooter like Concord, which lacks a single-player campaign or any gameplay beyond competitive online matches.
Concord fails to bring anything new or interesting to the genre, and its character designs, widely criticized by gamers for being unappealing, have only added to its poor reception. This situation underscores the negative impact that ESG and DEI initiatives has on the gaming industry, with Sony certainly bound to face significant financial losses from Concord’s failure.
According to Jon Weisnewski, one of the game’s lead designers, Concord’s failure was apparently eight years in the making. In a Twitter thread celebrating the launch of the world’s “wokest” first-person shooter, Weisnewski mentioned that he joined the project when Firewalk Studios had already been working on the game for five years.
Eight long years, which helps explain why Concord felt so out of sync with a global audience that’s grown tired of the same old 5v5 hero shooters, as the market is already flooded with them.
Charging an upfront fee of $40 only further alienated any potential player base that might have developed, though it was likely deemed necessary to justify the game’s enormous development budget.
This is why Mark Cerny, Sony’s PlayStation chief architect, unintentionally hinted that another video game crash could be on the horizon, as many modern developers are more focused on activism than actual game design.
The industry appears to rely more on DEI and Affirmative Action hires for tax incentives rather than prioritizing talent, skill, and credentials.
Whereas decades ago, a large-scale game could be developed within a year or possibly two at the latest, it’s now common for games to take several years and cost hundreds of millions of dollars, especially for titles from Sony-owned studios.
Sony had high expectations for Concord, pouring significant resources into its marketing campaign to promote the queer-focused hero shooter on platforms like Twitch.
The game also garnered strong support from gaming journalists, who have frequently been at odds with the gaming community, pushing for censorship of games targeting heterosexual audiences while enthusiastically endorsing progressive titles like this one.
To ensure maximum exposure, Sony are more or less borrowing the credibility of their other first party studios from Insomniac Games to Naughty Dog and Sucker Punch to promote Concord via social media.
The exact amount of money Sony spent over Concord’s eight-year development is unclear, but it’s almost certain to have exceeded $100 million. Sony’s confidence in the game’s commercial potential was evident, as they even released themed PlayStation 5 controllers, signaling their belief that Concord was set to be a major success for the company.
However, with a peak of only 697 players on Steam and likely even fewer on PlayStation, it’s quite possible that more Concord-themed controllers will be sold than copies of the game itself.
Another developer from Firewalk Studio took to Twitter to express excitement for the game’s release, only to quickly have a meltdown after facing mockery and criticism for the DEI-focused shooter.
Xander Farrell, a animator who uses they/them pronouns on their Twitter bio, worked on Concord at some point during its eight-year development. Initially, they were excited to announce their involvement with the game, expressing pride in the work that they and the rest of the team had done, describing it as a labor of love.
Xander went on to express how honored they felt to have worked on their first “AAA” video game. For a smaller developer or, in this case, a view model animator, it would indeed be significant to have worked on something beyond small indie projects. However, it’s clear that Concord doesn’t truly qualify as a AAA video game.
In terms of LGBT representation and budget, Concord is as large-scale as any major video game, but it lacks any sort of substance. With no offline mode, no story, and being solely a live service hero shooter, it took nearly a decade to develop by the small team at Firewalk Studios, which was only acquired by Sony Interactive Entertainment in April 2023.
The studio includes former employees from Bungie and Activision, both of which have recently experienced layoffs, but this does not necessarily provide the studio with substantial backing or credentials. Just because Sony is willing to cover the costs of a soulless online competitive shooter and stick their name on the cover doesn’t automatically make it a AAA game, regardless of how many millions were spent on its development.
Given the nature of people with superficial gender identities and pronouns, it was predictable to see some kind of emotional response.
Gamers quickly responded to Xander’s post, expressing their opinions about Concord, a game that seemed to generate excitement only among journalists.
In a simple reply to his posts, someone expressed sympathy that Concord was Xander’s first large-scale project, given its poor performance upon release.
It was a kindhearted comment, but Xander responded by praising the game’s development team, which boasts individuals like Harold Ryan, former CEO, President, and Chairman at Bungie; Tony Hsu, previously GM and SVP of Destiny at Activision; and Ryan Ellis, former creative director at Bungie, who all left to join Firewalk Studios.
However it all went tits up when Xander remarked that he generally dismisses the opinions of what he referred to as “a bunch of talentless freaks” when it comes to Concord.
Clearly, labeling critics as “talentless freaks” is bound to provoke backlash, especially given that Concord has already become a target by gamers who’ve caught onto BlackRock’s ESG ideology. Consumers are eager for any reason to mock and criticize these “woke” games, and a developer’s dismissive remarks provided just the ammunition they needed.
People took note of Xander’s comments, and the responses became increasingly hostile. It was clear that his sudden “fame” went to his head, as he began to hide negative remarks about Concord from his replies, later demanding payment for the privilege of unhiding those posts which is more or less a way of “flexing” over others by hiding their offensive replies.
Xander’s Twitter account is now set to protected due to his inflammatory remarks, where he called gamers “talentless freaks” for expressing negative opinions about Concord.
His comments quickly spread across social media, reinforcing the fact that modern game developers are politically motivated activists pushing agendas on diversity and inclusivity within the industry if his they/them pronouns weren’t already an indication.
Concord brings nothing new or exciting to the table. Its developers spent nearly a decade creating a game aimed at the elusive “modern audience,” yet this phantom audience has ignored games that heavily pander to queer consumers with a strong focus on DEI initiatives in their design.
Sony spared no expense in marketing Concord, even investing in themed controllers for the game. Despite this, the game flopped on release day, struggling with only a few hundred concurrent players and ranking at the bottom of the hero shooter category on Steam.
In comparison, free-to-play alternatives like Apex Legends and Overwatch 2, which also focus on ugly character designs and queer representation, have player counts that exceed Concord’s by over a hundred times.
Even other free-to-play games like Paladins and Rogue Company have seen more success. The irony is that Sony cannot afford to make Concord free-to-play, as it would lead to substantial financial losses. Instead, they’ve earned only tens of thousands from the $40 price tag and are hoping to recoup more through microtransactions for cosmetic items.
Square Enix attempted a similar strategy with Foamstars, a Splatoon clone exclusive to PlayStation platforms. Initially offered as a free game for PlayStation Plus subscribers for the first month, it later required a $40 fee for a lackluster hero shooter plagued with microtransactions.
Unsurprisingly, once the free trial ended, player numbers plummeted by 95%, making Foamstars one of Square Enix’s biggest financial failures in recent years. The company has since avoided mentioning it in their quarterly reports.
Sony is likely to face a similar fate with Concord, as its small player base is expected to quickly diminish within weeks, if not days, and the best part of all being a live service title is that once the servers are pulled, that’s it. The game is dead.
Despite the fact that the game is more or less dead on arrival, Sony are likely to keep its servers around for the foreseeable future given that the main allure of Concord is its weekly cinematic vignettes focusing on its ugly characters and providing “lore” and “backstory.”
Peaking at nearly 700 players, it makes the live service release of Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League look impressive by comparison, though it we’re being honest it should’ve been canceled like SEGA’s Hyenas.
