Firewalk’s Closure Reflects Serious Management Issues Within PlayStation This Generation

Well, it’s official- Sony has announced that Concord and developer Firewalk Studios are both being permanently shuttered. From minute one, the doomed first-person shooter never really stood much of a chance. Since its announcement, it had been abundantly evident that people weren’t much interested in buying what it was selling, and the closer we got to launch, the clearer it became that Concord was going to struggle to find an audience- though few could have predicted that it would struggle as much as it did.

Within a mere two weeks of launch, following disappointing sales and lukewarm critical reception, Concord was pulled offline, and everyone who bought the game was refunded. Firewalk and Sony’s position at the time was that they would put their heads together and try and figure out a different future for the game- which implied that maybe there was a future for the game. Many assumed that maybe it would return in the form of a free-to-play shooter, but really, the more you thought about it, the clearer it became that Concord was likely not going to get a second shot. Not after going down as one of the biggest and most high-profile first-party failures the games industry has ever seen.

Now, Sony has made the announcement that Firewalk Studios is shutting down, with mobile developer Neon (previously known as Savage Game Studios) also being shuttered, and it’s an absolute shame for just so many reasons. First and foremost, it’s a shame, of course, that multiple hundreds of people are losing their jobs, adding to the already several thousands of job cuts and layoffs this industry has seen over the last couple of years. It’s also a shame to see a new IP bombing this hard. Gaming, like any creative medium, desperately needs a constant influx of new ideas, so to see a major new first-party IP failing in this fashion is never great. You just know that a bunch of c-suite executives out there are going to decide based on Concord’s failure that maybe it might not be worth the risk to make big bets on completely new properties- which is the opposite of the direction we want to be headed in.

Beyond that, however, Firewalk Studios’ closure is also indicative of a much larger issue at PlayStation, and yet another glaring example of the cavalcade of poor decisions the company has made these last few years. The PS5 generation as a whole has seen Sony at its most frustrating in multiple ways. Yes, we have obviously had a number of great first-party games over the course of this generation, from Horizon Forbidden West and God of War Ragnarok to Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 and Astro Bot, among others, but though the company has continued to deliver quality games, that has unfortunately gone hand-in-hand with disastrous mismanagement in other areas.

Sony acquired Firewalk Studios just about a year and a half ago, in April of 2023, prior to which it had already agreed to fund and publish the studio’s debut title, so clearly, it believed in Concord, or at least what it could become. Where that confidence came from, however, is a real headscratcher, because knowing what we now know of Concord, we can say with equal confidence that though it wasn’t without its own fair share of gameplay strengths, overall, it clearly wasn’t equipped for long-term success- or even short-term success, as it would turn out. No, it was a flawed $40 Overwatch clone in 2024, in a market that’s already flooded with similar live service shooters.

Banking so hard on Concord was in and of itself a mistake, then, but even more egregious is how Sony has chosen to deal with the fallout. Firewalk is being shuttered less than two years out from being acquired, hundreds of people are losing their jobs, and the game they spent years working on was allowed to remain online for just two weeks. And let’s not forget Neon Koi, the mobile studio that was acquired just a couple of years ago as part of Sony’s big mobile push- which, as per co-CEO Hermen Hulst, still remains an important part of the company’s strategy, in spite of the fact that Neon Koi is being shuttered, and its game cancelled. Looking at Concord and its fallout with Firewalk, it’s hard to think of examples of other publishers handling a rough situation with this kind of bumbling idiocy and lack of grace. Truly, PlayStation leadership has made an absolute mockery of itself.

Unsurprisingly, the conversation once again takes us back to Sony’s misguided live service ambitions. We’re barely a couple of games into those plans, and the list of failures is already long. Concord shelved, and Firewalk shuttered. The Last of Us Online cancelled, and Naughty Dog looking nowhere close to releasing a new game this generation. London Studios shuttered, and its live service game cancelled. Partnered AAA indie studio Deviation Games shuttered, before it could even announce its game. The only success Sony has seen in this arena so far has been Helldivers 2, which is more of a surprise success than one that the company worked for and planned around- and even that Sony has somehow managed to fumble with its PSN requirements on PC, illustrating just how to snap defeat from the jaws of victory.

You can, of course, understand from a financial perspective why Sony wanted other streams of revenue besides its big budget single-player titles, but Firewalk’s closure and the disastrous decision-making surrounding Concord are perfectly emblematic of how terribly the company has executed on those plans. In his internal email to PlayStation employees where he announced the shuttering of Firewalk and Neon Koi, PlayStation’s co-CEO Hermen Hulst touched on how the company will learn from the failings of Concord as it moves forward, but it’s hard to imagine this version of PlayStation having the capacity to learn more its mistakes.

This version of PlayStation is so entrenched in its idiotic vision for the future that it feels like it’s only ever going to make terrible decision after terrible decision. Like shuttering a studio that you should never have bought less than two years after buying it. Like laying off 900 people earlier in the year. Like spending over $300 million on Spider-Man 2, watching it enjoy widespread critical and commercial success, and then laying off a bunch of people at Insomniac anyway. Like investing multiple billions into Bungie, only to watch the studio’s condition go from bad to worse in the blink of an eye. Like adopting a collective policy of squeezing as much money out of your audience as possible, with increased prices for games, consoles, accessories, or subscription services. Like selling a pro console for $700 and refusing to sell it with a disc drive, or hell, even a stand.

And that’s just scratching the surface. This is the version of PlayStation we’re stuck with, and the Concord debacle is yet another stark reminder of that. Obviously, you want to hope that Sony will indeed learn from these huge and costly mistakes – and boy have these mistakes been huge and costly – but they had to make a string of mind-numbingly stupid decisions to find themselves in this position, leaving you to wonder whether they even have the capacity to know what the right path forward is.

Note: The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of, and should not be attributed to, GamingBolt as an organization.