After Redfall and Suicide Squad, Concord's failure must be the nail in the coffin for the industry's failed live-service gold rush
Sep. 4, 2024Too many games are living short, embarrassing lives
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Concord is dead. After being in some form of development for eight years,Sony’s first-party hero shooter lasted just 11 days before the announcement thatit would be pulled from sale, with refunds handed out to anyone who purchased it. There’s potential for it to return, but Concord remains the product of nearly a decade’s work at the behest of the biggest company in the industry. It has next to nothing to show for it.
The trend is obvious, but also easy to buck. In the midst of these failures-to-launch were two multiplayer games that went truly stratospheric.Palworldrose to temporarily become the second highest-played game in Steam history.Helldivers 2has wavered in the face of its massive success, but is still drawing in more players on a random weekday months after release than Suicide Squad did at launch.
Failure to launch
There’s no one reason for the success or failure of any of these games, but contributing factors abound. Redfall reportedly struggled to hold onto staff who’d joinedArkanekeen to work on the immersive sims it was famous for, and launched in a very rough state. Suicide Squad was the unfortunate casualty of a poor initial reveal and general superhero fatigue. Concord’s bland character design has taken a lot of flak for its poor reception, and Sony’s somewhat lacklustre marketing campaign has clearly also failed to ignite players. But there’s a core theme running through all of these big wins and losses.
The live service push exists because major studio executives want the guaranteed income streams that come with major hits. The likes of Fortnite, GTA Online, League of Legends and several more of the biggest multiplayer games out there literally print money for their owners, and major publishers want their own slice of the pie – a game that players continue to invest in long after they’ve paid the $60 entry fee.
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The issue is that that pie was sliced up years ago, and now only a few morsels remain. If you’re a regular player of Fortnite, GTA Online, or League of Legends, there are only so many hours in the day to play something you’re already invested in, and it takes something special to get you to reinvest that sunk cost into a new game. Palworld and Helldiverswerethat something special - unique enough to avoid treading on the toes of an established juggernaut, cheap enough to encourage investment in the attention that unique twist brought them, and lucky enough to garner massive word-of-mouth support.
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Elsewhere, Deadlock proves that even in the same genre space as Concord, there’s room to be found for something new. Admittedly,Valve’s new hero shooter hybrid comes packed with the pedigree of having been made by one of the best shooter studios in history and the benefit of a ‘worst kept secret’ marketing campaign, but its MOBA twist is evidence for the case that developers need to bring something new to the table, especially if they’re bucking audience expectations. Space for a game like Redfall, or Kill the Justice League barely exists – and in the few crumbs of available room, the appetite for those studios to produce a game that isn’t a new Dishonored or Arkham title seems pretty limited.
Perhaps it deserved better - ourConcord reviewsays it’s “by no means a disaster and has the potential to grow into a compelling hero shooter.”
I’m GamesRadar’s news editor, working with the team to deliver breaking news from across the industry. I started my journalistic career while getting my degree in English Literature at the University of Warwick, where I also worked as Games Editor on the student newspaper, The Boar. Since then, I’ve run the news sections at PCGamesN and Kotaku UK, and also regularly contributed to PC Gamer. As you might be able to tell, PC is my platform of choice, so you can regularly find me playing League of Legends or Steam’s latest indie hit.
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