Sony shuts down the Concord studio and shuts down the game permanently

On By Littum

Sony is closing Firewalk Studios, the studio behind its PlayStation Concord game that it took offline last month after a disastrous launch. In one message to PlayStation staffHermen Hulst, CEO of the PlayStation Studio business group, says Firewalk Studios will merge with Neon Koi, a mobile game studio. The closures will affect around 210 jobs, Bloomberg reports.

“We’ve spent a lot of time over the last few months exploring all our options,” says Hulst. “After much consideration, we have determined that the best way forward is to permanently sunset the game and close the studio. I want to thank everyone at Firewalk for their craftsmanship, creative spirit and dedication.”

says Hulst Concord didn’t hit Sony’s targets and that the PlayStation maker will “take away the lessons learned.” Concord and continue to advance our live service capabilities to deliver future growth in this area.”

Concord debuted on August 23rd on both PS5 and PC, but Sony took the game offline on September 6th after poor sales of the game. Estimates have set sales of under 25,000, and Concord only managed to reach an all-time peak of just 697 players on Steam, lower than the launch of The Lord of the Rings: Gollum.

Sony’s Neon Koi mobile game development studio is also shutting down, despite Hulst saying that “mobile remains a priority growth area.” Sony originally acquired the German-Finnish studio when it was known as Savage Game Studios in 2022, and the team was working on an unannounced triple-A mobile live service action game.

“With this re-focused approach, Neon Koi will close and its mobile action game will not move forward,” says Hulst. “Both decisions were given serious consideration, and ultimately we feel they are the right ones to strengthen the organization.”

Some of the affected developers may find roles at Sony’s other studios, but the rest will join the thousands in the games industry who have been laid off over the past few years.

Update, October 29: Added Bloomberg’s reporting on how many jobs were affected.