You’d think that after canceling The Last of Us’ multiplayer last year, Sony will have finally learned its lesson and stop itself from releasing a live service title that they know full well won’t generate profits. Then again, how could anyone predict a first-party Sony title that launched simultaneously on both PlayStation 5 and PC be in the running for the worst AAA title in recent years with player counts so low that it made commercial failures like Redfall seem successful?
Just days after Firesprite launched Concord on August 23, Sony has announced the immediate cessation of sales for its latest PlayStation exclusive, with plans to take the game offline entirely on September 6.
Initially positioned as Sony’s entry into the competitive multiplayer area, Concord has instead become a painful lesson about chasing trends and lackluster titles. The game’s failure to capture an audience was evident from the start. On Steam, it only reached an all-time peak of just 697 concurrent players, dropping to double digits in a few days. To put this into perspective, even games considered commercial failures, such as Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League and Skull & Bones, managed to attract significantly larger player bases at launch and both still do higher player numbers.
Ryan Ellis, the game director for Concord, addressed the situation in a somber blog post. “While many qualities of the experience resonated with players, we also recognize that other aspects of the game and our initial launch didn’t land the way we’d intended,” Ellis stated. The director went on to explain the decision to take the game offline, framing it as an opportunity to “explore options, including those that will better reach our players.”
Sony has committed to offering full refunds to all players who purchased Concord, regardless of the platform or method of purchase. PlayStation 5 users who bought the game through the PlayStation Store or PlayStation Direct will receive automatic refunds to their original payment methods. PC players who bought their copies on Steam or the Epic Games Store will also get their money back in the coming days. For those who purchased physical copies, Sony has advised checking with individual retailers for refund processes.
With eight years of development time invested in Concord, the costs associated with the project are likely to be in the tens, if not hundreds, of millions of dollars. This doesn’t account for marketing expenses or potential revenue from planned post-launch content and microtransactions, which will now never materialize.
The decision to pull Concord from the market and issue refunds is a clear admission of the game’s failure to meet both player expectations and internal projections. It speaks volumes about the company’s lack of confidence in its ability to recover while setting the tone for future live service titles—release doesn’t guarantee immunity from cancelation.
The company had previously announced plans to launch multiple live service titles, but this setback may force a reevaluation of that approach. Hiroki Totoki, already scaled back expectations, committing to launching just six of the 12 live service games originally in development. With Concord’s failure and Helldivers 2 crashing hard, Sony’s live service ambitions appear on increasingly shaky ground.
The best-case scenario is Sony goes back to the drawing boards to focus more on single-player exclusive titles, releasing a mix of third-party exclusives like Stellar Blade and pseudo-exclusives such as Black Myth: Wukong while looking forward to the drip feed release of games that are part of its China Hero Project with its usual slate of first-party exclusives from the usual suspects like Santa Monica Studio, Naughty Dog, and more.
Make no mistake. Executives will still chase trends like crazy, even though Concord’s failure is probably a sign that the live service bubble has officially burst. But Sony will at least tread a lot more carefully going forward.
