Sony Shuts Down Firewalk Studios & Neon Koi

The video game industry has lost two PlayStation Studios today: Neon Koi, a rather unknown studio, and Firewalk Studios. Since the release of their debut game, Firewalk Studios has been a topic of concern. Their game launched on August 23 and was taken down on September 6, and it's unbelievable that Concord went down in 11 days. Some of us played Concord and didn't like it, and some did. Even those who didn't play the game were at least talking about it online.

Following its acquisition, Firewalk Studios supposedly developed a $400 million game; however, the game went offline two weeks after its release, prompting a refund for all users. As of last week, there was talk that PlayStation was considering re-releasing Concord. Regardless of our skepticism about the decision since it seemed like an enormous task for Firewalk, this happened today. Sony ultimately opted to close Firewalk Studio and take a loss of $150 million.

PlayStation co-CEO Hermen Hulst has confirmed the news with an official announcement. He went on to say, "Unfortunately, we did not hit our targets with this title, adding that the first-person shooter genre is a competitive field that is always growing. In order to achieve future growth in this area, we will apply the lessons acquired from Concord and keep improving our live service skills."

It's clear that the hero-shooter community didn't find Concord to be the game they were looking for. Despite some criticism about the character design, it was simply not a game they wanted to invest their time and energy into. When a project that has had so much effort put into it ends up in this state, it's a blow for Sony, Firewalk, and everyone else involved. To some extent, it's also disappointing for the fans who invested their time and energy. But at least they were refunded, so that's a small consolation.

This situation is difficult for Sony, regardless of how you analyze it. Naturally, Sony would like to cash in on the profits from a Live service game. However, I would like to see PlayStation stick to single-player games like God of War or The Last of Us, which is something they do best. If they are serious about investing in more projects like this, they have to make better decisions. These games need to know when they're coming out and in what kind of market they could potentially be released. Because Concord took eight years to develop, the market had already shifted dramatically by the time it was released.

If you overlook the character design, nothing in Concord was lacking in terms of gameplay, but it still wasn't enough. Surprisingly, that wasn't nearly enough to uphold the game's online presence. Because with the likes of Overwatch 2 and Apex Legends performing so well, hero-shooter fans demanded more. No matter what the future holds, Concord will remain a bitter lesson for PlayStation.

So it's official, then. The Firewalk studio has shut down, Concord will never hit the shelves, and we will never play that game again. It's important to recognize that several employees were laid off, and their careers were directly or indirectly affected by these ventures, and our hearts go out to them. We sincerely hope they'll be able to find new opportunities, and we wish them the best as they try to recover. Great things were anticipated from Firewalk Studios, but the fact remains, nevertheless, that they failed to deliver.