Sony disaster: "Concord" is shut down just two weeks after launch

Only a few hundred people played it on Steam: Sony is shutting down its online shooter "Concord" after just two weeks. Buyers get their money back.

(Image: Sony)

at 11:59 am CEST

3 min. read

By

Daniel Herbig

This article was originally published in German and has been automatically translated.

The launch of Sony's online shooter "Concord" is turning into a super-GAU: apparently due to disastrous sales figures, Sony wants to shut down the game just two weeks after its market launch. The company announced this in a blog entry. "We are also aware that aspects of the game and the launch did not go as we had imagined. Therefore, we have decided to take the game offline from September 6, 2024," Sony writes in the post.

According to the blog entry, Sony wants to "explore options to better reach our players" –, indicating that the shooter could return as a Free2Play title. Anyone who has bought "Concord" digitally should get their money back. This applies to users of the Playstation Store as well as Steam and the Epic Games Store. It is currently no longer possible to buy "Concord".

The extent of the failure

It is almost unprecedented for an online shooter that has only just been released to be taken down again just two weeks after release. It is also remarkable that it is happening to one of the world's largest games companies, Sony. The drastic action demonstrates the extent of the failure of "Concord". A look at the unofficial Steam database SteamDB shows that no more than 607 people ever play "Concord" on the platform at the same time – a figure so bad that it is almost unbelievable. For comparison: Valve's rival game "Deadlock" was played by over 18,000 people when it wasn't even announced and you needed an invitation to start the game.

In contrast to "Deadlock", "Concord" is also available on other PC platforms and on Playstation. However, "Concord" hardly seems to be doing any better here. Sony has understandably not provided official sales figures, but according to one analyst, Concord has only sold 25,000 copies.

Well-known competitors

"Concord" is a so-called "hero shooter", a mixture of traditional online shooters and popular moba games. You select a character with special abilities and use them to fight in team battles. Concord" thus competes with Blizzard's "Overwatch" and Riot's "Valorant", among others, but Valve's new "Deadlock" is also a hero shooter. As a rule, such games are financed via microtransactions and are generally free to play.

The case of "Concord" is somewhat reminiscent of Amazon's failed online shooter "Crucible", which wanted a slice of the "Fortnite" pie a few years ago. The game failed similarly spectacularly and was sent back to beta just a few months after its launch. A little later, "Crucible" was then completely scrapped.

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