Concord May Not Be As Dead As Everyone Thinks After All

Concord may be considered one of 2024's biggest flops but players shouldn't count out the hero-shooter just yet as it may be preparing a major return. Launching on August 23, Concord quickly became a meme online as Firewalk Studio's multiplayer game failed so badly that it was completely delisted from storefronts just two weeks after its release with the development team issuing refunds to everyone who purchased it. It was an unfortunate mixture of a middling competitive experience, poor advertising, and an incompatible market, but Sony could be setting up Concord for another try.

Per PCGamesN, players have noticed that the SteamDB for Concord has received almost daily updates in the last few weeks. The nature of these updates is still unknown but it is odd that Firewalk is continually tweaking the game's Steam listing if it's no longer available for sale. This by itself isn't enough to suggest that Concord may return soon, but it does have fans of eagerly anticipating some kind of announcement, especially when the studio implied that it was taking some time to reconsider the game and its launch as a whole.

Should Concord Return?

It Doesn't Seem All That Wise

Close

Firewak Studios made it clear when it delisted Concord that it was going to "explore options, including those that will better reach our players," leading many to believe that the studio would re-release the game at some point in the future. How the revamped launch might look has been widely debated amongst the community, with many suggesting that Concord pivot away from being a paid experience and embrace a free-to-play model. Even if that is the direction Firewalk opts to take, it seems doubtful that enough players care for Concord's take on hero-shooters.

The multiplayer genre has always been extremely competitive and with the sub-genre of hero-shooter becoming more popular than ever, it's oversaturated. Concord may be a technically solid shooter but it doesn't bring anything unique or new to the table that helps it stand out from its contemporaries. One might argue that the attempt at telling a focused story with weekly cinematics may have been a fun hook but since no one cared for the game's characters, the cutscenes failed to impress.

Related Concord Review: Losing An Uphill Battle For fans of the genre, there's a lot to like about the new 5v5 hero shooter Concord, but finding something to love feels much less likely.

Screen Rant's Take: Concord Shouldn't Return

There's Just No Room For It

Free-to-play live-service games take something far more valuable than money from people: Time. I believe that if Concord does want to go the route of offering a free experience to players, it needs to provide some kind of justification as to why users should play it over something like Overwatch 2, Apex: Legends, or the forthcoming Marvel Rivals. Unless the entire gameplay loop is revamped to be made into an experience that stands out from the crowd, I doubt that the game will be able to find an audience in such a competitive space.

Source: PCGamesN