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The original was posted on /r/hobbydrama by /u/Smackrel-of-Piss on 2025-01-02 16:49:37+00:00.
The Rise, Baking, Cooking, Resting, and Failure of Concord
This is a chronicle of the life and subsequent death of the hero shooter Concord, made by Firewalk Studios for the PlayStation 5 and PC. One of, if not the most, doomed-to-fail and unwanted gaming disasters of recent time. Now you may have heard of Concord through some grapevines about how controversial it's launch was or about the characters within the game even if you aren't a big gamer yourself. Hopefully this post will help paint a clearer picture of this infamous game, from some humble beginnings to deep, deep holes.
A Studio of Vets and a Nothing-Burger Reveal
This all begins with the studio behind the game, Firewalk Studios. Founded in 2018, Firewalk Studios began after various game devs from other well known studios such as Infinity Ward, Bungie, and Respawn, left to create their own studio and combine their knowledge and experience with FPS games to create something new. Fast-forward to 2023 and PlayStation purchased Firewalk after seeing what they were working on and having "confidence" in them, bringing them onboard as a flagship developer.
From then, crumbs of what they were working on made it through to some game leak communities. As with leaks of any kind you take it with a pinch of salt but there were a few credible sources that gave folks a glimpse of what they could expect from Firewalk. An "FPS that focuses on gunplay and combat with style and theming from Marvel's Guardians of the Galaxy" is the general gist that was thrown around. Again, this was all within the leaks community, so only a small portion of fans knew of what to expect come a proper reveal or tease. And it wouldn't be too long until that was.
May 24th, 2023, PlayStation has a Showcase event that showed off future games and drummed up excitement for what was to come in the next year or so. During this there was a small tease for a game from a studio that people were excited to see. Concord was finally revealed or rather, teased barely, for the general public to see and know about. Now the teaser trailer was really just that, a tease, a bare showing of a ship with some aesthetic looking décor and an oddly detailed burger. Then a title drop and date of 2024, that's it. A short description would be used on the standalone trailer uploaded to YouTube later that detailed what the game would be, but for a majority of people they were still in the dark about the gameplay.
And that was about it until one faithful, infamous day in 2024.
How Not To Reveal Your PVP Game
May 30th, 2024. PlayStation has a State of Play stream to reveal and show off new and upcoming game releases. And the headliner first shown game? Well, it's Concord, everyone! Excitement brewed as they were about to finally show off what Firewalk Studios had been working on for at least a few years now, and the Freegunner world of Concord was on display right at the start of the show. They start off with a 5 1/2 minute story-based cgi cutscene of some characters "doing a heist gone wrong", full of Marvel-esq humor and quirky lines, a desperately Star-Lord based reptilian man, some shooting and blasting, some moves and actions that look very much like character abilities, teamwork being shown...and oh no, wait, this is giving some vibes of a game genre people were not expecting this to be. The cutscene ends and some Firewalk employees start talking about the game and the proverbial rug gets pulled from most of the interested viewers, Concord was a 5v5 PVP Hero Shooter.
To say immediate reactions were bad is an understatement. They were unhinged and brutally honest, announcing a new entry into a medium of games that had their big moment in the spotlight years ago that only has a few honorable mentions still going today was an immediate shot in the foot. Not only was it the type of game people were upset with, but initial reactions to the general look of the game and the important characters you will play as were equally as bad, if not worse. Hero shooters were popular, sure, if it were a few years earlier, but to release a new entry in 2024 after numerous others have tried and failed just didn't seem right.
The combination of a hero shooter and "Guardians of the Galaxy" wasn't bad on paper, it actually could've been a really cool idea, but the way Concord presented itself with this was just not right. Like an uncanny valley feeling but for the general game, many people (including myself) just felt that nothing good was going to come from this game at all. Yet as with any IP there are those who did like the idea and were optimistic, and with a beta set only a few months in the future it would only be a matter of time until impressions were made firsthand.
Beta Blunders
July 12th, 2024. The first half of the Concord beta begins, an Early Access weekend for preorders on PS5 and PC. People finally will get hands on with the game after months of debate on how it could play out. Both genuinely excited players and those who want to see just how bad this could be log on (or watch) and begin to try out this new hero shooter.
Now this first weekend was a closed beta, meaning only players who preordered the game and got a code had access, so it makes some sense that overall numbers of people playing isn't a statistic to worry about. So an average number of players for this weekend not being crazy is okay, right? Let's take a moment to compare Concord's closed beta to another up-and-coming hero shooter Marvel Rivals. Rivals had it's own closed beta around the same time as Concord, and the numbers it drew in dwarfed Concord. Roughly 20x the amount of players tried Rivals, which even though Rivals wasn't a pay-to-enter closed beta it still required a sign up and relied on a little bit of luck to get chosen (or gifted a code from a friend). Well, I did forget to mention that every preorder also gets you an additional beta code to share. Neat, you can get a friend to try it too. Oh wait, no, I meant 3 codes, even more possible players. Except I lied again...it was 5 additional codes. For every preorder player they could get 5 more people to try it out, and even with this generous bonus the closed beta statistics were pretty dang low. "Oh okay, well it's still a closed beta overall so who cares about the player count really?", I hear you asking yourself, well these betas serve as a starting point to survey interest in the game. So when a closed beta mainly given out to preorders doesn't hit good numbers, it can begin to show some lack of interest.
Stats aside, the general sentiment about the gameplay at this time was high due to the ones playing the game being people who already put money towards it. It's not surprising for this to be the case, these people want the game to do good, but lets move to the Open Beta where a lot more of the feedback comes from, and where even more disaster looms on the horizon.
July 18th, 2024. The Open Beta for Concord begins and continues through the weekend. This is where games get the most valuable feedback, where things can really begin to shine, or where issues can really begin to show their face. Anyone could download the beta and try it out, they can get a feel of what Concord has to show them.
Impressions were not good, mixed at best. Multiple game review outlets put out media sharing their disappointing time with the beta, stating a general lack of polish and overall empty feeling of nothing really standing out to make the game seem special. General threads are made for players to share their thoughts. There were some good things to talk about, like the gun play (not surprising due to the Destiny vets in the studio), the graphics, the sound, but those are all secondary to the main meat of players worries. The main issue that kept getting brought up, "Why is this going to be $40?" In a field of games that opt to be Free To Play, Concord was sticking hard to it's $40 buy-in to play the game, and people did not like that. It's a hard pill for potential players to swallow that even in an open beta people were discussing what the point was. Even the hero shooter juggernaut that is Overwatch 2 had to go F2P, so keeping this buy-in ...
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