Sony closes Concord studio and permanently shuts down the game

Sony is closing Firewalk Studios, the studio behind its PlayStation Concord game that it took offline last month after a disastrous launch. In a message to PlayStation staff, Hermen Hulst, CEO of the PlayStation studio business group, says Firewalk Studios will close alongside Neon Koi, a mobile game studio. The shutdowns will affect about 210 jobs, Bloomberg reports.

"We have spent considerable time these past few months exploring all our options," says Hulst. "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."

Hulst says Concord didn't hit Sony's targets and that the PlayStation maker will "take the lessons learned from Concord and continue to advance our live service capabilities to deliver future growth in this area."

Concord debuted on August 23rd on both PS5 and PC, but Sony took the game offline on September 6th after poor sales of the game. Estimates have put sales at under 25,000, and Concord only managed to hit an all-time peak of just 697 players on Steam, lower than the launch peak of The Lord of the Rings: Gollum.

Sony's Neon Koi mobile game development studio is also shutting down, despite Hulst saying "mobile remains a priority growth area." Sony originally acquired the German-Finnish studio when it was known as Savage Game Studios in 2022, and the team was working on an unannounced triple-A mobile live service action game.

"With this re-focused approach, Neon Koi will close, and its mobile action game will not be moving forward," says Hulst. "Both decisions were given serious thought, and ultimately, we feel they are the right ones to strengthen the organization."

Some of the impacted developers may find roles within Sony's other studios, but the rest will join the thousands in the game industry that have been laid off over the past couple of years.

Update, October 29th: Added Bloomberg's reporting about how many jobs were impacted.