The “$400,000,000” Disaster of Concord

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Successful live-service games generate lucrative and recurring revenue streams, courtesy of microtransactions and battle pass sales. Blizzard Entertainment set the standard in many respects considering the way it supported the original Overwatch, which accrued an astounding $1 billion in revenue and 30 million registered users in its first year of availability. Game publishers across the industry quickly jumped at the chance to get a piece of the pie, some pursuing the service trend to great success while others crashed and burned. The gold rush has long held merit given the number of console players who devote playtime to such experiences on a monthly basis. And as a console manufacturer, Sony may have felt doubly incentivized to dip its toes in the same water.

After becoming a dominant force in the single-player games space throughout the PlayStation 4 era, Sony Interactive Entertainment started investing more into multiplayer endeavors around the launch of the PS5. It notably took an interest in Concord, a hero shooter spooled up under the watchful eye of industry veterans who'd previously worked at Activision, Bungie, and BioWare. However, not even this level of expertise could guarantee success.

Concord developer Firewalk Studios built a solid foundation in terms of gameplay, yet critics and players balked at the visual design choices and the boldness of the game’s premium price tag. In a world where Overwatch 2 launched as a free-to-play experience to an already established fanbase, the likes of the Firewalk endeavor could only afford so many missteps. After all, multiplayer audiences have a finite amount of time and money, commodities that needn’t be wasted on experiences incapable of attracting and maintaining their attention. Concord failed on both counts and then some, which its creators paid for dearly.

This is the tragedy of Concord.

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