Firewalk Studios Releases Statement On Closure

Sony has announced that Firewalk Studios is being shut down after the failed launch of Concord. Shortly after the announcement became public, Firewalk Studios took to social media to release a final statement on the closure.

“Firewalk is signing off one last time,” the statement begins. “Firewalk began with the idea of bringing the joy of multiplayer to a larger audience.”

It then goes into more detail about what the studio was able to accomplish during its time.

“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.

You can read the full statement from Firewalk Studios below.

With the studio’s closure, 172 people are being let go. Sony has not responded to any request for comment on if any Firewalk employees will have the opportunity to move to other studios within PlayStation.

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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.