It’s almost hard to believe, yet when you look closer, the pieces fall into place.
Sony’s release of Concord will go down as legendary, a live-service hero shooter that was doomed from the start thanks to its progressive and ugly character designs alongside its divisive focus on pronoun usage.
The designs of Concord, shaped by Jon Weisnewski who once stated that “Whites must acknowledge their privileged position” have contributed to what can only be described as one of the most significant financial failures in modern gaming.
Concord’s beta was initially planned as an exclusive for those who pre-ordered, but Sony and Firewalk Studios decided to make it available to everyone. Despite this, hardly anyone showed up to play.
The game, which had been highly demonized by consumers before launch, performed so poorly that Sony decided to take it offline just two weeks after its release, issuing refunds to those who had paid $40 for the experience.
Concord set out to position itself as a premium experience in a market crowded with free-to-play hero shooters. However, the modern audience never materialized, and it quickly faded after release, just as many had predicted.
There’s a strong sentiment among gamers to see “woke” games, driven by BlackRock’s ESG and DEI initiatives, fail. This sentiment was only heightened by biased game journalists aggressively promoting Concord to an audience that outright rejected Sony’s $40 price tag.
It was initially believed that Sony suffered a staggering $200 million loss on the game, a figure that seems unreal until you consider the context.
Jon Weisnewski himself mentioned that the live-service hero shooter, lacking both a single-player campaign and an offline mode had been in development for nearly eight years.
Given the rising costs and complexities of modern game development, particularly when driven by activist and feminist agendas in Western society, the $200 million price tag doesn’t seem too far-fetched.
What was always an “indie” title eventually received corporate backing from Sony Interactive Entertainment, which has been increasingly promoting LGBTQ+ themes with the PlayStation brand since moving the headquarters of SIE to America.
It seems Sony’s massive failure with Concord led to even greater financial losses than initially thought. On the latest episode of Sacred Symbols, former IGN reporter Colin Moriarty revealed he spoke with a developer from the project, who claimed the game cost around $400 million.
This would make Concord the most expensive first-party project in PlayStation’s history.
That figure is staggering, almost unbelievable, if accurate especially considering Sony has previously disclosed the budgets for major first-party titles like Horizon Forbidden West, The Last of Us Part II, God of War Ragnarok, and Marvel’s Spider-Man 2, all of which surpassed the $200 million mark.
For Concord, a live-service shooter with no story mode and marketed as a barebones online experience, to not only match but double those numbers seems implausible.
Yet, Sony clearly had faith in the project, acquiring the small team at Firewalk Studios in 2023. Sony even went so far as to release special Concord-themed controller designs for the PlayStation 5, signaling their commitment to the game’s success and anticipated brand value.
Concord was massively overhyped by PlayStation executives, who reportedly called it “the future of PlayStation.” This sentiment isn’t entirely surprising, considering the brand’s decline since the PlayStation 4 era.
Sony has increasingly focused on enforcing censorship on Japanese developers, particularly around fanservice content, while shifting its attention toward Western titles that prominently feature LGBT characters and explicit sexual content involving said LGBT characters.
The game was so heavily hyped within both the studio and PlayStation that a culture of “toxic positivity” emerged, where no negative feedback was tolerated. Concord was being championed internally by Hermen Hulst, formerly of Guerrilla Games, who now serves as co-CEO of Sony Interactive Entertainment.
His leadership left little room for criticism, contributing to the game’s unchecked momentum despite its underlying issues.
Moriarty claims that by early last year, Firewalk Studios had already spent around $200 million on Concord, prior to Sony’s acquisition of the developer. The game was originally funded by Probably Monsters, with PlayStation joining as a publishing partner.
It’s unclear how much of that initial $200 million came directly from Sony.
After acquiring the studio and taking full control of the project, Sony reportedly spent an additional $200 million preparing the game for release. According to Moriarty, Concord was in a disastrous state just 18 months ago, with no player onboarding or monetization systems in place.
Outsourcing was needed to salvage the project, but the game still bombed commercially, peaking at just 697 concurrent players on the far more popular PC platform.
Moriarty explained from a budgetary standpoint, Concord is the most expensive first-party game Sony has ever released. While there are other PlayStation first-party titles currently in development with higher budgets, of the games that have been released, like Marvel’s Spider-Man 2, this one cost even more.
And they lost EVERY penny.
Sony Interactive Entertainment truly believed Concord, with its progressive yet uninspired character designs, about as visually appealing as the back of a garbage truck had the potential to propel the PlayStation brand forward.
Internally, executives saw Concord as a Star Wars-level franchise. The only issue? It turned out to be an even bigger failure than Ubisoft’s Star Wars Outlaws.
So, in that sense, Concord did live up to the Star Wars name post-Disney acquisition. The game was designed for regular replay, with weekly cinematic vignette updates intended to expand the “lore” of its roster of pronoun-focused characters, many of whom would likely be depicted as queer couples to emphasize the game’s inclusivity.
Notably, the character “Bazz,” a large, muscular Black “woman,” was modeled after transgender musician Mila Jam, further reflecting the game’s commitment to representation.
The animated story vignettes were likely a major factor in the game’s astronomical budget. After release, Concord grossed around $1 million, but Sony ended up refunding the entire amount when they pulled the plug on the game after just two weeks.
Concord marks one of Sony’s biggest financial losses, if not the largest. Following the game’s failure, its developers, including animator Xander Farrell, experienced mental health episodes, which they expressed on social media.
In response to a comment absolving him of blame for one of the year’s most anticipated flops and a universally disliked title, Xander Farrell, an animator on Concord, defended the game, calling it a “labor of love” and dismissing critics as “talentless freaks.”
This comment sparked a wave of backlash from gamers, who bombarded him with insults. Xander, taking the high road, began hiding unsatisfactory replies and even mocked the situation by suggesting that people should pay him to unhide their comments.
Despite the attitudes of the outsourced hires, the narcissism within Firewalk Studios itself was staggering. Concord even included an option for players to press a button to “cheer” for the developers during the game’s credit sequence, highlighting the inflated sense of self-importance surrounding the project.
To my knowledge, several games allow players to interact with the credits screen in creative ways. For example, Nintendo’s Super Mario games often include fun mini-games during the credits, adding a playful element that highlights the stark contrast between Western game development, focused entirely upon political themes, and the more fun-centered approach of Japanese developers.
A similar case is NieR: Automata, where after completing the final playthrough, players must shoot down enemy ships representing the game’s development staff during the credits. This turns the sequence into a challenging bullet-hell experience that leads to a meaningful narrative conclusion, especially if you choose to accept help from other players.
Concord, on the other hand, allows players to pause and restart the credit sequence and offers standard camera panning options. However, it also includes the ability to cheer for the developers by pressing buttons, launching rocket projectiles or fireworks, and triggering lines from the game’s characters.
The idea of celebrating the developers for such a project feels misplaced, especially considering the developers’ dismissive comments about critiques, referring to critics as “talentless freaks,” and the character designer lamenting about White privilege.
It all comes across as an exercise in narcissism and self-indulgence for a game that allegedly had a “toxic positive” problem.
Sony seems to have lost their way. I felt this way when they overpaid $3.6 billion to acquire Bungie, only to assign them the task of developing a live-service extraction shooter called Marathon instead of having them work on a Killzone game or another installment of Destiny.
Marathon appears to emphasize progressive and inclusive character designs, featuring unattractive “female” characters. It’s likely that this game will also carry a $40 price tag, despite lacking any offline mode.
Meanwhile, Sony reportedly spent over $200 million on Concord, not even counting the cost of acquiring Firewalk Studios.
If all of this is accurate, it will be fascinating to see what implications this has for PlayStation’s future. Hermen Hulst will be under immense pressure, as he oversaw PlayStation Studios during the development of Concord and has since received a pay raise as the head of Sony Interactive Entertainment.
Given that the future of PlayStation seems to be dominated by bland, progressive DEI-focused live-service titles like Marathon and Fairgame$, it’s highly probable that Sony could face nearly a billion dollars in losses if both games perform similarly to Concord.
This scenario is likely, especially if they carry $40 price tags and are estimated to cost around $200 million to develop. This comes after Sony internally decided to scrap a proposed multiplayer adaptation of The Last of Us due to its tumultuous development which bore no fruit after multiple years.
The record-breaking failure of Concord falls squarely on Hermen Hulst’s shoulders, and he may very well bring the PlayStation brand to its knees in the coming years.
He is currently greenlighting several projects centered around the Horizon franchise, including a remastered version of Horizon Zero Dawn, which is only four years old and has already been released on PC. Additionally, there’s an upcoming Lego-themed adaptation titled Lego Horizon Adventures, featuring Sony’s progressive fat lesbian corporate mascot, Aloy.
Hermen Hulst is clearly showing favoritism in funding projects, especially given his roots as the founder of Guerrilla Games, the developers of Horizon. This is evident in Sony allegedly scrapping plans for a Days Gone sequel, the director was left frustrated after the game’s inclusion in Sony’s recent Astro Bot release.
Instead, Sony chose to back Concord, which ended up costing the company hundreds of millions in losses, further fueling the sense of bias in Hulst’s leadership.
With Sony preparing more live-service content in the coming years, the PlayStation brand, already lacking in exclusive titles seems destined to crash and burn. The recent announcement of the PlayStation 5 Pro, priced at an absurd $700 USD for a digital-only version, contrasts sharply with the PS4 Pro, which launched at the same price as the original PlayStation 4 years prior.
PlayStation, as we once knew it, is effectively dead. The few remaining games under the brand have been irreparably damaged by radical progressive ideology. Sony is expected to lose much of the revenue they’ve accumulated by charging gamers for PS+ subscriptions since the PS4 era, as their upcoming live service titles are almost certain to flop, sinking like a dead fish.
