Concord’s future still unknown as the game’s Director steps down

Concord‘s Director, Ryan Ellis, has stepped down following the game’s dire launch last month which ultimately resulted in Sony pulling it from sale and refunding everyone who purchased a copy.

Since being taken offline, there has been no communication as to what comes next for Concord or, more importantly, the staff at Firewalk Studios impacted by its failure to sell copies. According to Kotaku, who has spoken to sources within the development team, Ellis (who formerly worked at Bungie as Destiny 2‘s Creative Director) still remains at the company but will now adopt a supporting role.

While there are no doubt critical discussions being had in regards to the future of Firewalk and its flagship title, Sony’s radio silence has opened the door to rampant speculation. Having invested millions of dollars and years of development time into creating Concord, it seems unlikely that it would be completely abandoned, especially when you consider how fun the core game is. Despite the circumstances surrounding the game’s launch, it played really well with fun, frenetic first person shooting and interesting character loadouts. In our Concord review we scored it an 8/10 and were admittedly saddened to see the axe fall so soon, casting doubt over its promising future.

Although it was refreshing to see a multiplayer game eschew the heavily-monetised free-to-play model, it’s evident that fans of the genre weren’t willing to pay a one-time fee of £34.99 for a PvP-only video game. Pulling a U-turn and squeezing Concord into that F2P mould now seems like the most likely course of action though it won’t happen overnight. Firewalk would potentially need to consider which elements to lock behind a paywall, how to implement earned and premium in-game currencies, and whether future content should be rolled out in a monetised season pass.

Giving the game away to PlayStation Plus subscribers isn’t completely off the table, though it would leave a question mark over Concord’s PC version. Seeing how poorly it performed on Steam, would Sony abandon the platform completely to focus on its core PlayStation audience?

There’s also the possibility that Concord may never return and that Firewalk will now support other PlayStation Studios. Finally, there’s a grim chance of major layoffs and a scenario in which the developer is shut down entirely, given the tumultuous industry landscape right now.

We’re still hoping for the former outcome. There’s a great game in Concord and one that could reach the audience it deserves if smartly repackaged and relaunched at the right time.

Tags: Concord, Firewalk Studios, Sony