Sony’s ‘Concord’ Shutdown an Indictment of Live-Service Gaming

Sony Interactive Entertainment’s Sept. 3 decision to shut down and take offline new title “Concord” less than two weeks after it launched is both the latest and most crushing blow yet to what was once an ambitious push into live-service games. 

But the $40 upfront pricing scheme for “Concord” was a tough sell when free-to-play games are the norm for most live services. 

It’s already difficult for any new live service to break through when five titles accounted for more than a quarter of all play time on console and PC last year. But the free-to-play model is here to stay and requires such games to add new content constantly and in perpetuity to keep things affordable.

Affordability and developer bandwidth are big aspects on which live services can last for years at a time, especially in PlayStation’s case. But after Sony acquired Bungie in 2022, the studio has struggled to churn out new updates quickly enough to keep the lights on, resulting in multiple rounds of layoffs and other parts of the studio being scaled down.

That same year “The Last of Us” wowed HBO audiences, SIE and Naughty Dog decided to cancel an online multiplayer version of its lauded games, citing the expected challenge of having to maintain the game past launch, which Naughty Dog concluded would delay yet to be announced single-player titles on which it is working.

“Grand Theft Auto” steward Rockstar has already proved Naughty Dog’s instincts were correct. “GTA” doubles as both a leading live-service brand and campaign-oriented single-player game, but the decade-plus effort to bring “GTA 6” to gamers while continuing to update “GTA Online” has resulted in layoffs and cancellations of other titles and rereleases.

To date, 2008’s “GTA 4” has never been updated past its PS3 and Xbox 360 versions, despite being one of the most heralded games ever. Even juggernauts Roblox and Epic Games’ “Fortnite” outsource much of their content development to third parties.

As far as lackluster launches go, the multiplayer team shooter has had some company in recent years, notably Xbox’s “Redfall” last year, plus Ubisoft’s “Skull & Bones” and Warner Bros.’ “Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League” earlier in 2024.

The decision to issue refunds to players for a game that spent eight years in development has got to sting, and the “Concord” peak count of less than 700 concurrent players on PC storefront Steam is well under that of the “Suicide Squad” game, which launched with over 12,000 concurrent players. Likewise, most failed games at the AAA level tend to last at least one year, which was the case for “Redfall” before it was decommissioned. 

However, one game of note with a legendarily messy launch underscores the real issue. 

CD Projekt’s “Cyberpunk 2077” launched at the end of 2020 in a broken state on consoles that had just become last-gen, as versions tailored to the new PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series systems wouldn’t be ready for more than a year. While the PS4 and Xbox One versions were playable on the new consoles thanks to backward compatibility, the publisher set up an opt-in refund program. 

But after many patches for the base game and its eventual next-gen editions and “Phantom Liberty” expansion released, “Cyberpunk 2077” remains in the top 10 of most concurrent Steam players, a huge success story.

Most important, “Cyberpunk” is a single-player game from a publisher that specializes in such games and has yet to pivot to a live-service push. As difficult as the launch was, it was never taken offline, nor were content updates expected before its many bugs could be patched, which wouldn’t have been the case if the game were a live service.

To some critics, “Concord” was nothing more than a too-late clone of Blizzard’s “Overwatch” games, which first hit shelves in 2015. This claim of similarity arose when the game was first revealed in June and wasn’t unlike the comparison of EA’s 2019 “Anthem” dud to Bungie’s “Destiny” games. 

“Concord” isn’t off the books just yet, as PlayStation’s official announcement of its shutdown left the door open for a situation where the game could conceivably come back in a different state, most likely as a free-to-play title if it ever relaunches.

But to keep the game running would mean developer Firewalk Studios would have had to continue working on content updates while developing an improved vision of the game, requiring the kind of bandwidth that’s exceedingly rare at studios. Like Bungie, Firewalk was acquired by Sony during the development of “Concord,” leaving the fate of the studio entirely in Sony’s hands. 

For now, the only entities that will make money from “Concord” are the scalpers listing physical copies for hundreds of dollars, despite servers shutting down Friday.