PlayStation close down and refund game eight years in the making less than two weeks after launch

LIVE-SERVICE games have been hotly debated as they are either hyper-successful like Fortnite or crash and burn like Babylon’s Fall.

It feels as if as soon as the genre exploded executives at major companies began demanding more live-service games over single-player or story-driven ones.

This can be seen when Rocksteady, best known for the excellent Batman Arkham series, suddenly began to develop a live-service Suicide Squad game.

In particular 2024 has been particularly bad for live-service games, with more released than ever before, and ultimately more flops as well.

In fact, the only live-service game that has seen success is Helldivers 2, while others like Foamstars has gone free-to-play in order to save itself.

However, PlayStation has now made an unprecedented decision to shut down its latest live-service release before it’s had the chance to find its fanbase.

Concord is a hero shooter that was released for PS5 and PC on August 23, 2024, and Sony recently announced that it would be shut down by September 6, just two weeks later.

While we have heard of live-service games being shut down within a year of release, this is the shortest time between launch and closure.

A statement on the PlayStation Blog reads: “While we determine the best path ahead, Concord sales will cease immediately and we will begin to offer a full refund for all gamers who have purchased the game for PS5 or PC. 

“If you purchased the game for PlayStation 5 from the PlayStation Store or PlayStation Direct, a refund will be issued back to your original payment method.”

Sony is refunding everyone who purchased the game, no matter the platform, and has ceased sales.

Concord saw a disappointing launch and reportedly only sold around 25k copies, which is very low for a triple-A game.

At its peak, it had less than 1k concurrent players on Steam and this had dropped to less than 200 a week after launch.

While it received middling reviews, fans believe this isn’t the driving reason for the game’s failure.

The main complaint that players had about Concord was that it fell a little flat, but that technically it was well put together.

It is believed that a number of decisions made by PlayStation are more to blame than the game itself.

Firstly, Concord was released at a time when players were already fatigued with live-service games, with dozens being released in the last few months.

Concord also received very little marketing from Sony especially compared to other exclusive titles like Astro Bot.

Also while many live-service games are free, Concord cost between $40/£35 and $60/£50, depending on the edition.

Finally, on PC, where many people choose to play shooters, players were required to have a PSN account, something that has proven to be unpopular in the past.

You can find more details about the closure on the PlayStation Blog.

If you want to read more about PlayStation, check out the alleged exclusivity deal for Black Myth: Wukong.