Concord Gets Pulled from Steam and PS5 Storefronts- Refunds are Being Issued

In an unprecedented decision, PlayStation have announced that their latest live service flop ‘Concord’ will be removed from storefronts less than two weeks after its release. This came as part of a blog post from PlayStation in which comments have been closed. The main reason behind this decision appears to be due to the abysmal player count numbers. Should a single player game flop with a concurrent player count of less than 100 a couple of weeks after launch, this isn’t too big of a problem. If the game is still playable and accessible, it will very likely stay up.

Image by PlayStation

Such is not the case for live service multiplayer games with no single player options, however. In the couple of weeks since its release, Concord has failed to surpass 700 concurrent players- with less than 100 being the average over the last few days. For a hero shooter that relies on a large player base for people to even be able to find matches, the lack of any actual players is a clear problem. As a result, publisher PlayStation decided to pull the plug on Concord and offer a full refund to anyone who picked it up across all platforms. As I mentioned earlier, this is quite unexpected and goes even further to prove how much of a catastrophic financial failure Concord has been.

Image by PlayStation

Speaking on the reasoning for removing the game from storefronts, PlayStation said the following:

“…our initial launch didn’t land the way we’d intended…we have decided to take the game offline…and explore other options, including those that better reach out players”.

In the announcement, they confirmed that anyone who purchased the game via Steam, Epic Games or PlayStation store would receive a direct, automatic refund back to the purchase method originally used. They also announced that the game would officially be taken offline on September 6th. After this point, anyone who received a refund will be unable to access the game. What this means for the future of Concord is unclear and whether it will be making a comeback is dependent on how committed PlayStation and developer Firewalk are to making this IP work. For now, however, Concord has been put out of its misery.