In a surprising transfer, Sony is pulling the plug on its long-in-development shooter recreation, Concord, simply two weeks after its launch, and following a disaster of a launch.
Harmony, which was launched on Aug. 23 for PC and PlayStation 5, will begin to go offline on Sept. 6, the Harmony’s Sport Director Ryan Ellis said in a Sony PlayStation blog post. The sport was developed over a interval of about eight years by Bellevue, Wash.-based Firewalk Studios. Gross sales of the sport have stopped and people who purchased the sport on companies equivalent to PlayStation Retailer, Steam and Epic Video games Retailer ought to begin seeing refunds rolling out quickly.
“…Whereas many qualities of the expertise resonated with gamers, we additionally acknowledge that different facets of the sport and our preliminary launch did not land the best way we would supposed,” Ellis wrote within the weblog submit. “Due to this fact, right now, we have now determined to take the sport offline starting September 6, 2024, and discover choices, together with these that can higher attain our gamers.”
The submit doesn’t element whether or not meaning there are plans for a re-release of the sport in some unspecified time in the future sooner or later. Sony didn’t instantly reply to a request for remark.
Ellis goes on to put in writing, “Whereas we decide the perfect path forward, Harmony gross sales will stop instantly and we are going to start to supply a full refund for all players who’ve bought the sport for PS5 or PC.”
Those that bought a bodily copy of the sport are inspired to return it to the retailer. Returning the sport means gamers will now not have entry to the title earlier than it’s shut down.
Whereas Sony and Firewalk by no means revealed publicly how a lot the sport value to develop, some estimates have ranged from $100 million to $200 million, which is what Sony has reportedly spent on a few of its big-budget first-party video games.
When Harmony launched, the small number of players in the game prompt very low gross sales within the title’s first days, and players began having trouble finding matches, an indication that the stay service wasn’t well-populated.
Harmony additionally confronted stiff competitors in its quick lifespan. Not solely was the $40 recreation in comparison with free-to-play hero shooters equivalent to Overwatch 2 and Apex Legends, but it surely debuted on the identical day as Black Myth: Wukong and per week earlier than Star Wars: Outlaws.
