PlayStation Shuts Down Concord Developer Firewalk Studios and Mobile Studio Neon Koi - News
by William D'Angelo , posted on 29 October 2024 / 4,897 Views
Sony Interactive Entertainment announced it has shut down Concord developer Firewalk Studios and mobile studio Neon Koi.
Neon Koi's mobile action game will not be moving forward and Concord, which was delisted and taken offline on September 6, will not be returning.
"As part of our ongoing efforts to strengthen SIE’s Studio Business, we have had to make a difficult decision relating to two of our studios – Neon Koi and Firewalk Studios," said Sony Interactive Studio Business Group CEO Hermen Hulst.
A Sony spokesperson told Bloomberg around 210 employees will be laid off between Firewalk Studios and Neon Koi. This is according to a spokesperson for Sony.
Read the full message from Hulst below:
Dear Team,
Today, I want to share some important updates from Sony Interactive Entertainment’s Studio Business Group.
We consistently evaluate our games portfolio and status of our projects to ensure we are meeting near and long-term business priorities. As part of our ongoing efforts to strengthen SIE’s Studio Business, we have had to make a difficult decision relating to two of our studios – Neon Koi and Firewalk Studios.
Expanding beyond PlayStation devices and crafting engaging online experiences alongside our single-player games are key focal areas for us as we evolve our revenue streams. We need to be strategic, though, in bringing our games to new platforms and recognize when our games fall short of meeting player expectations.
While mobile remains a priority growth area for the Studio Business, we are in the very early stage of our mobile efforts. To achieve success in this area we need to concentrate on titles that are in-line with PlayStation Studios’ pedigree and have the potential to reach more players globally.
With this re-focused approach, Neon Koi will close, and its mobile action game will not be moving forward. I want to express my gratitude to everyone at Neon Koi for their hard work and endless passion to innovate.
Regarding Firewalk, as announced in early September (An Important Update on Concord), certain aspects of Concord were exceptional, but others did not land with enough players, and as a result we took the game offline. We have spent considerable time these past few months exploring all our options.
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.
The PvP first person shooter genre is a competitive space that’s continuously evolving, and unfortunately, we did not hit our targets with this title. We will take the lessons learned from Concord and continue to advance our live service capabilities to deliver future growth in this area.
I know none of this is easy news to hear, particularly with colleagues and friends departing SIE. Both decisions were given serious thought, and ultimately, we feel they are the right ones to strengthen the organization. Neon Koi and Firewalk were home to many talented individuals, and we will work to find placement for some of those impacted within our global community of studios where possible.
I am a big believer in the benefits of embracing creative experimentation and developing new IP. However, growing through sustainable financials, especially in a challenged economic environment is critical.
While today is a difficult day, there is much to look forward to in the months ahead from the Studio Business Group and our teams. I remain confident that we are building a resilient and capable organization driven by creating unforgettable entertainment experiences for our players.
Thank you for your continued support.
Firewalk is signing off one last time.
— Firewalk (@FirewalkStudios) October 29, 2024
Firewalk began with the idea of bringing the joy of multiplayer to a larger audience. Along the way we assembled an incredible team who were able to:
- Navigate growing a new startup into a team during a global pandemic: Firewalk was…
Read a final message from Firewalk Studios posted to Twitter below:
Firewalk is signing off one last time.
Firewalk began with the idea of bringing the joy of multiplayer to a larger audience. Along the way we assembled an incredible team who were able to:
- Navigate growing a new startup into a team during a global pandemic: Firewalk was founded in 2018 and was very small for its first couple years, only entering full Production in 2022.
- Build a new, customized next-generation FPS engine in Unreal 4 -> 5, delivering top-tier gameplay feel, beautiful worlds, and a performant 60fps technical experience on a stable and scalable backend on PS5 and PC to hundreds of thousands of players in our beta.
- Manage an acquisition / integration while readying technical and preliminary tests.
- And ultimately ship and deliver a great FPS experience to players- even if it landed much more narrowly than hoped against a heavily consolidated market.
We took some risks along the way – marrying aspects of card battlers and fighting games with first-person-shooters – and although some of these and other aspects of the IP didn’t land as we hoped, the idea of putting new things into the world is critical to pushing the medium forward.
The talent at Firewalk and the level of individual craft is truly world-class, and teams within Sony Interactive Entertainment and across the industry will be fortunate to work with them. Please reach out to Recruiting at PlayStation for inquiries, and thank you to all the very many teams, partners and fans who supported us along the way.
See you in the Tempest.
- Firewalk Studios
...
[end transmission]
A life-long and avid gamer, William D'Angelo was first introduced to VGChartz in 2007. After years of supporting the site, he was brought on in 2010 as a junior analyst, working his way up to lead analyst in 2012 and taking over the hardware estimates in 2017. He has expanded his involvement in the gaming community by producing content on his own YouTube channel and Twitch channel. You can contact the author on Twitter @TrunksWD.
More Articles
Can’t say we didn’t see that coming with all the money Sony put into the studio and game.
It will unfortunately still happen, GAAS are a very high risk - very high reward strategy and Sony adopted a strategy where they financed a lot of such project at once, most of them won't be successful but the few that might may make the overall investment worth it, but of course for those that a are not successful they'll most likely suffer the same faith.
All that investment for nothing. Good Lord...
You win some and you lose some with Gaas. Helldivers 2 is one of the most successful Playstation games of all time.
True, but you're not supposed to lose some by a record setting margin lol. Considering the cost Sony put into the game from its budget, marketing, and the studio acquisition itself, you have to imagine Concord took out a lot of the profits Helldivers 2 brought in.
I was figuring Concord would've at least had a year to recoup some of the costs, let alone less than 2 weeks.
Of course you're not supposed to but they probably didn't know how things in the market would change when they started it. By the time things changed, it was too late to make signficant game changes as well. What would it have turned into? The game play was there but as a hero shooter it wasn't focused.
But even then, in that year, who's going to buy or play? If sales were as low as rumours suggested, I can't think of any amount of additional hype or gameplay changes that would bring in the punters.
Yeah, which is another consequence of the insanely long modern development cycles. Really the only chance they would've had was making the game FTP from the start. LawBreakers ran into the same problem, but even that game was more successful.
I was figuring a year prior to the games launch. It didn't seem like it was getting hardly any attention, and typically the lifespan of failed live services is about a year. Obviously my estimation fell dramatically after the games launch weekend. Figured it had 6 months at most, but little did we know just how short of a life the game was going to have.
There must have been something Sony as able to do to 'write off' the loss, which is why it was pulled so quickly and why we are now likely to never see it again.
We could go on about what the game needed for ages to succeed. But it's been discussed to death already... the game's death :P
I just hope that this was a learning experience; for them, and for any other developer watching.
Gotta be the biggest bomb of all time...
When I was a kid and had to prepare a presentation for school, sometimes I knew 'Man, this is bad." But I just couldn't stop. Because the deadline came closer.
At the base of it, maybe this is what happened to Concord, too.
It's still baffling me, because I did presentations rarely, and SIE have been doing nothing but videogames for 30 years.
Still, I think mistakes happen.
It's how you cope with them and learn from them. Pulling the plug was brave and right. Closing Firewalk ... not so much, I had hoped they wouldn't go there.
But in this tough environment this doesn't surprise me, sadly.
But damn, I gotta admit I would have never expected SIE to fail that big evaluating an IP.
I guess many people could have told them very early they should drop Concord.
100% correct here, and yes Sony should have stopped this way back!
Stopped what? Development entirely? That's just a waste too.
What they should have changed is what Concord was and turned it into a either PvE shooter/single player game. But how long into the development was it before what we got was ready that it was too late to turn it into something else? This PvP only game had no AI, so creating a single player or PvE wouldn't have been easy while adding a story would have taken time. More money spent.
Concord as a concept was fine, it's execution bad.
EDIT: You know what, I am wrong, yes they should have stopped dev but in 2020 when it was only concept and they didn't own the studio.
That's an expensive learning experience, holy crap. At least they were smart enough to stop digging when they found themselves in a hole.
Next time maybe run some things by your intended audience to see if you're on the right track, before committing hundreds of millions?
Reminder that Factons II died for nonsense games like this.
200+ more jobs in the pile. Sony hasn't hacked off as many as Microsoft but what a waste still...
they will be passing the losses onto gamers one way or another
Hopefully they and other publishers learn their lesson from this
Why Neon Koi? They haven't even released anything yet
It was a gamble and it didn't pay off
This seemed all but inevitable unfortunately. Shame the mobile studio didn't even get a chance to put one game.
but Live service is the future am I right $ony?
Remember when everyone was hyped for Concord...
Wait, nvm lol
The tone is completely different with Sony closures. If this was Xbox, there would be 200 posts saying Xbox is bad.
Because Xbox shut down good studios with a track record, this studio didn't have one. Still sucks regardless
So you don't care about the people, only the history?
No, thats why I said the closure sucks regardless of history
They clearly thought the game was unsalvageable and probably didn't think keeping the studio around would be profitable. I don't think I can blame Sony, because the game did unbelievably poorly and would possibly have required massive further investment to turn it around. And having Firewalk develop a new game would have taken years and cost probably at least a comparable amount, all the while probably not having much confidence in Firewalk's ability to create a hit to even offset the losses of Concord.
This wasn't just any failure, this was an utter and total failure, and an incredibly expensive one as well. I doubt Sony shut down Firewalk if they thought the studio could redeem itself. Admittedly I haven't done my research, but I can't imagine many studios having survived this level of failure before. The game didn't just do poorly, it's entirely possible simply running it would have lost (even more) money.
I don't know to which extent Sony was actively involved in the development of the game, so I'd rather not draw any conclusions myself. Of course in an ideal world, someone (powerful enough) would have noticed the issues and changed course, and clearly that didn't happen. Regardless, unless Sony was heavily directing the development of the game, this seems like Firewalk's failure first and foremost to me.
Sony 1st party games are supposed to be the best in the world.
Creating the biggest dud in gaming history is an embarrassment, and wrecked the public perception of Firewalk as a Studio
They spent hundreds of millions of dollars on the game and made back none of it due to the flop and subsequent refund program. Did you really expect them to keep the studio open?
So the problem here is that Sony greenlit such a budget for an unproven new studio. Start small and allow for organic growth.
