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Firewalk posts farewell message as cost of Sony’s Concord deal reportedly revealed
Firewalk Studios has posted a farewell message following the announcement of the studio’s closure.
Parent company Sony Interactive Entertainment, which only acquired Firewalk last year, confirmed on Tuesday that it was shutting the company after its debut title bombed.
The title in question was Concord, a live service shooter which Sony signed early in development for an initial $200 million, according to Kotaku. Its sources claimed that amount wasn’t enough to cover the game’s full development, and also didn’t include the acquisition of the Concord IP rights or Washington-based Firewalk itself. An earlier report claimed it cost $400 million to make the game.
Sony took Concord offline and pulled the game from sale within two weeks of its release this summer, citing a poor reception from players.
In a farewell message published on X, Firewalk said it was proud of the studio’s work and its efforts to help push the medium forward, and it thanked players for coming along for the journey.
It’s full statement is republished below:
Firewalk is signing off one last time.
Firewalk began with the idea of bringing the joy of multiplayer to a larger audience. Along the way we assembled an incredible team who were able to:
– Navigate growing a new startup into a team during a global pandemic: Firewalk was founded in 2018 and was very small for its first couple years, only entering full Production in 2022.
– Build a new, customized next-generation FPS engine in Unreal 4 -> 5, delivering top-tier gameplay feel, beautiful worlds, and a performant 60fps technical experience on a stable and scalable backend on PS5 and PC to hundreds of thousands of players in our beta.
– Manage an acquisition / integration while readying technical and preliminary tests.
– And ultimately ship and deliver a great FPS experience to players- even if it landed much more narrowly than hoped against a heavily consolidated market.
We took some risks along the way – marrying aspects of card battlers and fighting games with first-person-shooters – and although some of these and other aspects of the IP didn’t land as we hoped, the idea of putting new things into the world is critical to pushing the medium forward.
The talent at Firewalk and the level of individual craft is truly world-class, and teams within Sony Interactive Entertainment and across the industry will be fortunate to work with them. Please reach out to Recruiting at PlayStation for inquiries, and thank you to all the very many teams, partners and fans who supported us along the way.
See you in the Tempest.
– Firewalk Studios
…
[end transmission]
Sony also announced today that it’s closing Neon Koi, the mobile game developer formerly known as Savage Game Studios, which it acquired in 2022.
“While mobile remains a priority growth area for the Studio Business, we are in the very early stage of our mobile efforts,” said Sony Interactive Entertainment joint CEO Hermen Hulst.
“To achieve success in this area we need to concentrate on titles that are in-line with PlayStation Studios’ pedigree and have the potential to reach more players globally.
“With this re-focused approach, Neon Koi will close, and its mobile action game will not be moving forward. I want to express my gratitude to everyone at Neon Koi for their hard work and endless passion to innovate.”
