Hermen Hulst, head of PlayStation Studio, has confirmed that the company is shutting down Firewalk Studios, and with it, any chance of a Concord revival. In an internal email shared publicly via Sony’s website, Hulst mentioned that the team has spent ‘considerable time’ exploring options to revive it. But Sony ultimately decided the ‘best path forward’ was to permanently sunset the game and close the studio.
“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,” wrote Hulst.
Previously, there were rumors that PlayStation might be planning to re-release Concord as a free-to-play game. Some eagle-eyed players noticed through SteamDB that the game’s backend kept getting updated every day since the server shutdown. However, as proven today, it led to nothing and both Concord and Firewalk Studios have been officially buried for good.
Concord itself was released in late August to barely any fanfare, reaching only 697 active players on Steam. It shut down two weeks after launch and the project was estimated to cost $400 million with 8 years of development time.
However, Firewalk Studios isn’t alone on the chopping block. One of Sony’s mobile studios, Neon Koi and its unnamed action game project, follow suit, signaling a shift in the company’s live-service and mobile ambitions. Back in 2022, the California-based company spent resources to build up a Mobile Division to break into the lucrative but highly competitive market.
“While mobile remains a priority growth area for the Studio Business, we are in the very early stage of our mobile efforts,” Hulst explained in the email. “To achieve success in this area we need to concentrate on titles that are in-line with PlayStation Studios’ pedigree and have the potential to reach more players globally.
Looking ahead, Sony’s live-service hopes are now pinned on two names. Fairgame$, a heist-themed multiplayer shooter, and Marathon, an extraction shooter reboot of Bungie’s classic narrative FPS. Yet with the closure of Firewalk and Concord, there’s a cloud of uncertainty around these upcoming releases. Will the newcomers fare any better in the volatile live-service arena– or will they relive the same fate as their predecessor?
