Elon Musk Claims ‘Wokeness’ Killed Concord in His Latest Video Game Rant

The first and only title from Sony’s subsidiary Firewalk Studios, Concord, debuted on August 23rd, 2024. However, it was shut down just two weeks later and became what’s believed to be the biggest failure in the Japanese company’s live-service efforts to date.

There are multiple reasons behind Concord‘s failure, but the biggest factor is that it failed to innovate in a genre that’s filled with highly-rated hero shooters. However, Elon Musk believes that the game couldn’t hit the mark due to its crippling “wokeness.”

Concord‘s Biggest Enemy Was Woke Culture According to Elon Musk

Many in the community believe that the philosophy of diversity and inclusion in video games simply doesn’t hold true. Players state that bringing such elements ruins the gameplay as it becomes more of a lecture than anything else.

Over on X/Twitter, one user cited the example of Concord and how its diversity, equity, and inclusion led to its eventual death. Elon Musk quoted the tweet and agreed with the fact that the hero-shooter failed because it prioritized political messaging over gameplay.

This game did not fail because “woke” it was just a bad game.

— Jordan Smith (@SquanchyC137) November 24, 2024

Musk has repeatedly stated in the past that the inclusion of woke elements ultimately kills art. According to him, developers should first focus on delivering a quality experience instead of incorporating political messages. Such things have never worked in any game’s favor, as we’ve seen in the past.

Despite Musk’s comments, many in the community believe that it wasn’t the wokeness of Concord that killed the game. It was due to the simple fact that it was a horrible title. It brought nothing to the table and had a price tag in a market where most of its competitors are free-to-play and do everything that it does ten times better.

Sony Pulls the Plus For Concord Developer

When Concord was pulled offline and refunds were issued to every player just two weeks after the launch, many players who enjoyed the experience were still hopeful. Sony said that it would attempt to look at various options for the hero-shooter.

However, the Japanese company instead opted to permanently dissolve the game and shut down its developer Firewalk studios. This puts an end to all hopes for a potential revival of the game sometime in the future.

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…

— Firewalk (@FirewalkStudios) October 29, 2024

The decision is the worst possible fate for Concord and Firewalk Studios. Industry experts stated that the game would be completely written off, recently after sources suggested that the hero-shooter cost $400 million to develop and over eight years of development time.

Rumors suggested that internally, the game was considered to be the future of PlayStation and had as much potential as Star Wars. We can only imagine the developers’ shock when the game peaked at 679 concurrent players on Steam after its launch.

Concord is now considered lost media, as it is completely inaccessible and not playable until the foreseeable future.