Pushing Buttons: the biggest flop in video game history caps off a brutal year for game development | Games

It’s official: after Sony pulled its struggling hero shooter Concord from sale shortly after it launched, the studio that made it will now be closing. Firewalk Studios was bought by Sony less than two years ago, as part of a strategy to improve PlayStation’s live-service portfolio. The closure of Firewalk cements Concord’s place as one of the biggest and most consequential flops in gaming history: the cost to Sony will have been in the hundreds of millions, with estimates of Concord’s development cost ranging from $200m to $400m in total.

Sony also closed Neon Koi, a developer with offices in Helsinki and Berlin, which focused on “mobile action games with epic stories” but had yet to release a game.

Having comprehensively outsold the Xbox with its PlayStation consoles for two console generations in a row now, Sony identified mobile gaming and live-service games (the likes of Fortnite, Overwatch and Destiny) as its growth priorities. It has had one live-service hit, Helldivers 2, a surprise success in January. But with Concord’s failure to launch and reports of continued troubles at Sony’s other live-service studio, Bungie – which makes Destiny, and which Sony bought in 2022 for $3.7bn – it’s not looking like this strategy is paying off.

“We have spent considerable time these past few months exploring all our options,” wrote Hermen Hulst, head of Sony’s studios, in a businesslike press release. “After much thought, we have determined the best path forward is to permanently sunset the game and close the studio. I want to thank all of Firewalk for their craftsmanship, creative spirit and dedication … I know none of this is easy news to hear, particularly with colleagues and friends departing.

“Both decisions were given serious thought, and ultimately, we feel they are the right ones to strengthen the organisation. Neon Koi and Firewalk were home to many talented individuals, and we will work to find placement for some of those impacted within our global community of studios where possible.”

The 150-plus people at Firewalk and an estimated 30 at Neon Koi join about 13,000 other video game workers laid off globally so far this year, as a post-pandemic economic contraction reshapes game development.

Firewalk’s staff posted a final farewell on X yesterday evening. “Firewalk began with the idea of bringing the joy of multiplayer to a larger audience,” it reads.

“Along the way we assembled an incredible team who were able to navigate growing a new startup into a team during a global pandemic … Build a new, customised next-generation FPS engine … and ultimately ship and deliver a great 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 fact that a studio can do all this and still flop spectacularly is sobering. Concord had its challenges, but it was not a bad game, nor were its problems down to underinvestment. But there simply wasn’t room for it in a shooter market that was already too crowded, and in which established names like Call of Duty, Fortnite and Apex Legends are too dominant. The timeline for all this is stunningly compressed – in just over two months, Firewalk launched its first game, had that game pulled from sale, and got shut down completely. I have enormous sympathy for everyone who worked there.

Concord never got the chance to evolve past its early problems, as so many live-service games have before it. Instead, it is likely to be remembered as the emblem of a shockingly brutal year in game development – the most brutal I can remember. More than 30 video game studios have shut down worldwide since 2023, as the stakes of high-end game development have become unreasonably high. Concord is the biggest, most expensive tragedy of this environment, but it is not the first – and it won’t be the last.

What to play

We have now entered the traditional Big Game Season, with Call of Duty out last week and Dragon Age finally returning after a long hiatus this Friday. I have been playing Life Is Strange: Double Exposure, a new game in the supernatural murder-mystery series about young people with extraordinary powers.

This entry returns to Maxine Caulfield, the teenage time-rewinding star of the very first Life Is Strange game in 2015. Double Exposure is not perfect by any means, but returning to this character felt very meaningful. Max was the first relatable teenage girl I’d ever played as in a video game, at a time when female protagonists were still rare, let alone queer female protagonists. Now, nearly 10 years on, I’m playing a game in which the grownup bisexual Max can ask out a small-town lesbian bartender in the opening half hour. Anyone with an attachment to the first Life Is Strange and its characters, who has wondering what might have happened to Max and Chloe after the storm in Arcadia Bay, will get a lot of enjoyment out of this game despite its flaws.

Available on: PS5, Xbox, Nintendo Switch, PC
Estimated playtime: 12 hours

What to read

• Halloween is coming up, so I sent two writers to a haunted prison to play horror games all night. It seemed like the ideal reviewing environment.

• Nintendo is ending service for its smartphone version of Animal Crossing in November, and replacing it with a premium version that has all the same content but without the free to play nickel-and-diming. It’s called Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp Complete – it’ll initially cost £10 and is out in December.

• Despite dismissing all the claims made by Hindenburg Research in its report a few weeks back, Roblox is to introduce a new type of parent-managed account, according to internal emails seen by the Verge. Seems like damage control to me.

• Amazon Prime’s adaptation of Like a Dragon is out this week. I’ve yet to watch it but the reviews so far are … divisive.

What to click

Question Block

This week’s question comes from reader Jonny:

“Growing up, my wife fell in love with Civilization IV. Now, with many more responsibilities, she’s looking to get back into gaming but finds most modern civilisation-building games too time-intensive and over-concerned with multiplayer battles. Are there any more relaxed civilisation-building games that you or other readers recommend?”

For a game with all the building without any of the battling that’s extremely suitable for stressed adults, I recommend Dorfromantik. It has you selecting matching hexagonal tiles to slowly and peacefully expand your micro-world, which has no warring humans in it to disturb the peace. If that’s a bit too laidback, try Anno 1800, which offers more traditional city building and civilisation advancement. It usually plays out as a rivalry between you and other nations, but you can actually turn that off and go entirely at your own speed if you like.

Have you got more recommendations for Jonny’s wife? Email them in! And as ever, if you’ve got a question for Question Block – or anything else to say about the newsletter – email us on [email protected].