PlayStation Is Closing Firewalk Studios After Putting Concord In The Ground For Good

An announcement from Sony Interactive Studios confirms that Concord developer Firewalk Studios is being shuttered, and the online first-person shooter will not see a return in any way.

Sony has shared an internal email from Sony Interactive Entertainment CEO Hermen Hulst detailing the closure of Firewalk Studios and the move to “permanently sunset” Concord. The statement claims that while “certain aspects of Concord were exceptional, others did not land with enough players, and as a result, we took the game offline.” During this time, it’s claimed that PlayStation evaluated numerous options for the future of the live-service title, but nothing viable came of it.

The death nail was hammered in with the following:

“After much thought, we have determined the best path forward is to permanently sunset the game and close the studio.   I want to thank all of Firewalk for their craftsmanship, creative spirit and dedication.”

While many believed that Concord would reappear as a free-to-play title, this won’t be the case. Instead of being Sony’s own Fortnite, Concord only managed to stay online for a fortnight before being pulled due to poor player numbers and reception. There are many learnings that Sony and PlayStation should take from this, but the statement doesn’t give me much hope that the right messages are getting through. “We will take the lessons learned from Concord and continue to advance our live service capabilities to deliver future growth in this area,” Hulst said.

The closure news doesn’t end with Firewalk, as this statement is a double-header of bad news. Neon Koi, the mobile game developer said to be working on action games for the platform, has also had its doors closed.

According to Jason Schrier of Bloomberg, 210 employees will be affected by the closures across the two studios, with 172 from Firewalk and 38 from Neon Koi.

No callouts or questions attached to this one.

Shoutouts to Bloomberg.