In gaming, there is talk about the end of the hero shooter Concord (Steam, PS5), as if it had hit an iceberg and sunk. It is referred to as a “megaflop.” Supposedly, Sony paid 250 million US dollars for the game, and Concord failed because it wanted to be too “woke.” It focused on diverse and overweight game characters, and that was said to be the wrong path. What is there to it?
This is the story of Concord in brief:
Concord has been developed by “Firewalk” in Seattle since 2018. They belong to Probably Monsters. The company emerged in 2016 from a spin-off of Destiny: The lead designer of Concord is the former weapons expert from Destiny 1, Joe Weisnewski.
Under the umbrella of this company, employees are building several AAA multiplayer games in separate studios and selling these studios to interested buyers.
Sony bought Firewalk and their game Concord in April 2023 for an undisclosed sum. Concord was supposed to be part of an initiative, to develop twelve live-service games for PS5 by 2026. This initiative also led to Helldivers 2.
Concord launched on August 23 on PS5 and Steam. It flopped and had so few players that matchmaking did not work. Sony announced on September 3 that they would discontinue the game and refund buyers.
How many millions $ did Sony lose on the flop Concord?
Did Sony really pay 250 million $ for Concord?? No. We do not know how much money Sony paid to acquire Firewalk. We do not know the production costs of Concord.
The statement that the game cost 200 million $ is a somewhat malicious estimate that assumes that many well-paid employees have been working on the game since 2018 for 6 years.
The 250 million $ comes from another corner: The parent company behind Firewalk, Probably Monsters, raised that much money for all their projects in an investment round in April 2022 (via gamesindustry, at that time there were 3 AAA multiplayer projects.
But it is not possible to conclude from that number the production costs of Concord or the purchase price of Firewalk.
One can suspect that Sony lost many millions on Concord – but the exact amount is unknown. Conservative estimates amount to about 100 million $.
“Concord flopped – because it is too woke”
What do people say about why it died? On social media, the “ugly characters” were blamed for the flop of Concord. Again and again, images of overweight game characters were shown on Twitter and YouTube as evidence that such a game can only flop.
Here, the idea “Go woke, go broke” comes into play, which is often spread. It carries the notion that those who focus on diversity and equality waste their resources on areas that interest no one. Developers should rather focus on making a better game.
But that is just the easily digestible and conspicuous reason, which allowed people to criticize the game without looking deeper into it. A single image is enough, and everyone immediately has an opinion and can then easily say: “Ah, of course. That’s why it had to inevitably fail. Sony must be crazy to release such a game.”
In fact, the characters may have been partly responsible for the failure, but other games – such as the successful Overwatch – also have a deliberately diverse cast and “strong characters”, yet those games were successful, or perhaps even because of that.
Even with Overwatch, one could have raised this argument in some form – but did not.
Analyst says: Concord met long-term goals – but missed short-term ones
What do experts say about why it failed? Analyst Daniel Ahmad has differentiated the reasons for Concord’s failure. He states that Concord did many things right that are often criticized in other hero shooters after a longer period (via twitter):
- Concord had good gameplay, was polished and launched content complete
- But it had no original ideas and felt trapped in the era of Overwatch 1
- It gave fans of hero shooters no reason to switch to the game when they have strong and free alternatives like Valorant and Overwatch.
Although Concord was polished, launched with a rich story and many features, it missed everything else and focused on the wrong things, fulfilling long-term goals before addressing the short-term goals of giving players reasons to play the game initially.
The marketing campaign also completely failed, so that nobody saw a reason to pay 40 $ to test the game.
Wrong genre, wrong time, wrong price
On top of that: The “hero shooter” genre is similar to MOBA.
Many developers believe there is a big hype around the genre and want a piece of the pie themselves, developing a successful hero shooter with interesting characters and new mechanics. But so far, only the two frontrunners Overwatch and Valorant have really succeeded – just like in MOBA, only LoL and DOTA 2 are successful.
All other hero shooters like Lawbreakers, Battleborn, Paragon, and Crucible by Amazon have failed and some have truly flopped terribly.
The problem is: Players invest a lot of time in a game like Valorant, learn the game, the characters, build up an account, love their skins, and enjoy their achievements.
To give all that up just to “learn a new game” where they start back at 0, players have to be offered a lot. In principle, a new game must look like the “next big thing” to even consider switching.
So far, it has only been Valorant that has succeeded in having people truly say: “Here is my future, I am committing to this game.” Including MeinMMO shooter expert Dariusz.
No one has really been waiting for all other hero shooters. New hero shooters offer something for which there is little demand. Those who like the genre play Valorant or Overwatch, have built up their accounts there over the years, learned the games, and invested a lot of money and time.
The attraction to switch to a new game that wants 40 $ and is already mocked everywhere on social media is low.
Another problem is the “Battleborn/Evolve” problem: A high-profile game comes out that evidently has a lot of work and heart put into it. The developer expects great success. But to players, it looks like a free-to-play title because it has established that titles in the genre are free-to-play. When players then see they have to pay money, it creates such a catastrophic flop that a high-quality game with high production costs becomes a financial disaster: I have never fully recovered from my trauma with the monster game “Evolve”
