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Shutdown within two weeks of release.
Never broke 1000 concurrent users on steam.
Estimated $100 million budget.
oof.
I don't think I even heard about it until now. π
What went wrong?
This video does a good job explaining it. TL;DW Its an overwatch clone that came out about 6 years too late, looks generic af and can hardly compete with the free and interesting games already available
The characters look absolutely boring design-wise too, with muted colors for some reason, giving off strong "We have Guardians of the Galaxy at home" vibes. In a hero shooter.
Bad marketing, low interest in Overwatch clones after OW2. Some people say diversity pandering but I like to imagine it's that people still remember Sony being a butt with Helldiver's 2.
yes
I read something along of 200 million? And 8 years of development? Not even sold 25.000 times?
If it wasn't for hundreds of people likely losing their jobs it would be really funny that Sony's greedy, cynical attempts to cash in on the live service fad keep failing
Itβs probably not even the artists fault it turned out this shit. My gut feeling is that the game is victim of incompetent leadership. Indecisiveness on important matters and micro management on stupid things.
Itβs also the same incompetent leadership who will get bonuses and promotions after this.
I want to paint easy villains into the world as much as anyone, but I didnβt see anything especially βevilβ about Concord; just poorly planned and uninteresting. Itβs more of a tragic failure of incompetence than anyone being greedy or hurtful.
I don't think the parent comment was trying to say that it's particularly evil. They rather meant "greedy" in the sense that these companies get a bit too excited about money.
Basically, live service games are pretty expensive to make and generally result in an incomplete/worse experience at launch. But if they're successful and gain enough of a player base, then they pay for themselves manyfold.
That's why these companies keep on gambling, by building live service games, rather than two or three smaller games from the same budget.
So to recap:
Man, Sony is taking L's like a motherfucker.
Sony shuts down all of their Japanese studios and redirects their efforts into developing βcinematicβ experiences to appeal to western gamers
They shut down Japan Studio, that's a name, they still have studios in Japan.
The game was alive for about 1.5 days for each year of development that they put into Concord.
Let's acknowledge for a second that well over 100 developers are about to lose their livelihoods. Now let's acknowledge that they were building a product from the start that disrespects consumer rights and preservation of the medium, and I'm still glad it failed.
Will the industry learn any lesson from this?
(no)
"Let's all laugh at an industry / that never learns anything, tee-hee-hee."
--Yahtzee Croshaw
"Clearly, the game would have worked if the characters would have looked like monkeys!"
"Refunds for PlayStation Store and PlayStation Direct purchases may take 30-60 days to appear on your bank statement"
Why do companies do this? They can process millions of dollars of incoming payments instantly, but take up to 2 months to reverse? Give me a break.
Bank transfers are slow. It is generally taken out of the account the next business day, sits in escrow for a few days, then appears in the destination account where it takes another day to clear. About a week total.
Though, if it gets held for suspected fraud or needs to cross international boundaries, it can sit in that escrow account for much longer.
In the EU we use SEPA and transfers are instantaneous. Used it when buying something of our local ebay when at the person's house. Also most banks even have Venmo style payment systems.. scan qr of your bank, click on my banks icon, authorize, done.
Companies sit on cash simply for cashflow reasons. Keeping the money in your account for an additional x days means it can be used for other stuff.
The company I work for does B2B and clients do the same shit. 45-90 day pay cycle after invoicing. That shit kills smaller businesses.
Remember when Sony laid off a ton of Bungie employees? Talk about a series of bad decisions.
At least they're giving refunds.
I wonder why they didn't make it free-to-play and try to cash in on microtransactions
That's presumably why it's going offline and everyone getting refunds
It's a non zero amount of work, and there's every chance they spend more money making that change than they would bring in.
It looked like every other generic hero shooter on the market. They were late about 6 years or so.
Every other generic hero shooter but not free
Haha holy shit that was fast. Stop shoving live service down your customers fucking throats maybe, sony?
Wow, I expected they'll go straight to free-to-play but I guess the game has such a bad reputation that they decided to take it down completely. Refunds being issued is awfully nice though.
Yeah, ain't no monetizing scheme is gonna save this one. There's just too much bad rep.
There's just too much bad rep.
On the one hand, that's not a bet I'd take since No Man's Sky exists.
On the other hand, NMS is definitely the exception, not the rule.
I didn't realize that there was a physical release for this game. I just bought myself a copy to keep sealed in my collection.
Remove from sale. Add more monetisation features. Rerelease as F2P. Cross fingers and hope for best.
Really looks like this game was designed by incompetent suits and marketing teams with the primary goal of turning those millions into more money. The game looked good and didn't seem to play (totally) awfully either. It just doesn't stand out or make anybody want to play it, like at all. It really is a another one of those AAA unfinished style over substance tech demos that masquerade as a game that got released into really saturated market at a really bad time, where the competition is usually also free.
Also something, something big capital overtaking creative process is one of the great disasters of our time.
The age of DRM means that they can now "unlaunch" the game and force you into a reimbursement while giving up the game. Why? What if someone liked it and wanted to keep playing? is this an online only game? This is just sad.
edit: this is a good time to remind people, if you live in the EU, please support the "Stop Killing Games" initiative, it has just past a third of the required signatures, and has 10 months to go still:
