Sony’s latest first-party title Concord is facing a very rough start, at least on PC, failing to draw in even a thousand concurrent players on launch day.
Usually the day of release for a game is typically it’s biggest day in terms of players, so for developer Firewalk and publisher Sony it must be at least a tad concerning that Concord is posting very low numbers. According to SteamDB, Concord managed to hit a peak concurrent player count of just 697 players.
That’s considerably lower than the game’s own betas managed just weeks ago. In fact, to provide some perspective, even Redfall, which was considered a huge flop, drew in over 6,000 players on its release last year. And that’s while it was available on Game Pass, giving people even less reason to pay full price on Steam. Redfall was also much cheaper than Concord which is selling for £34.99.
It’s also a far cry from the huge success that Sony’s other live-service game from earlier this year managed. Helldivers 2 became a huge success for the company, and is still drawing in 20-30k concurrent players every day.
Of course, these numbers don’t take into account how many people are playing on PS5. There could be many thousands enjoying it on Sony’s machine, but generally speaking I think the Steam numbers are a decent indicator that Concord isn’t doing well.
That’s a major problem because it seems like Concord has been in development for a very long time. A few days ago lead character designer Jon Weisnewski revealed that Concord has actually been in development for a whopping 8 years. Of those 8 year, Weisnewski has been working on the game for 5.
Now, to be fair, that could mean a few things. The game could have been in the conceptual stage for quite a few years before it ever entered full-blown development. Or his statement can be taken at face-value and Concord really has been worked on for 8 years.
It makes sense when you think about it. The game has drawn comparisons to the likes of Overwatch and Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy, both of which were very successful at the time of Concord’s inception.
Critically, though, it’s performing okay. Keeping in mind only a few reviews have filtered out, mostly due to code going out late and outlets wanting to test real-world performance, the Metacritic score is sitting at 68.
The game’s Steam reviews are also currently “Mostly positive” based on a few hundred people rating it.
Criticism brings us to @anim_xander, a former animator at Firewalk who handled first-person animation for several of the game’s Freegunners, specifically Daw, Duchess and Kyps. Talking to another user on X who stated that they were sorry Concord was @anim_xander’s first game due to the low player count, @anim_zander replied, “eh, i don’t really care. it was a huge labour from a lot of insanely talented people making an awesome game. why would i care about a bunch of talentless freaks hating on it?”
Needless to say, the reply, which has now been deleted, did not go down very well, as people rightfully pointed out that referring to people disliking the game as “talentless freaks” was an immature way to handle criticism.
It’s unclear as to exactly who the former developer is aiming the comments at. I’m assuming it was intended against criticism that Discord was heavily influenced by DEI ideals. However, it could also be levelled at the other major criticism I’ve seen online which is that the character designs are ugly. Even many of the positive Steam reviews mention this.
Whatever group the former dev was targeting, the result is the same: it’s not a very good look for a game that needs all the good publicity it can get right now. Concord could snatch a win from the jaws of defeat here, as other games have managed to do with positive word of mouth and a gradual building of trust. Sony and Firewalk have already committed to at least a few seasons of content, after all.
Right now though, the reality is Concord is a massive flop, especially for Sony who acquired Firewalk Studios in 2023, presumably because they thought Concord was going to be a hit and a perfect next step into the live-service market. Will these low player numbers cause the game to go free-to-play or perhaps even be offered to PS Plus Extra members? Or will Sony try to ride it out?