Concord Developer Firewalk Studios Says Goodbye For The Last Time With A Short Chronicling Of Studio’s History

Firewalk Studios, the team behind PlayStation’s live service flop Concord has been shut down by Sony. The news came in the form of an SIE blog post that was simply a re-posting of an internal email Herman Hulst sent out to staff today.

Though Firewalk’s closure was something many people expected, that doesn’t make it any less upsetting. Concord definitely didn’t land with everyone the way Firewalk wanted, but it did really hit with a few.

‘A few’ people really liking a game however is not enough to keep projects on Concord’s scale going, but it might’ve been the thing that allowed Firewalk Studios a chance that not every studio gets when it shuts down.

After the closure news went live, Firewalk Studios itself got to say goodbye to its supporters for the last time in a post on its official Twitter account.

The farewell post briefly chronicles the studios short history, and thanks those who helped the team along the way. You can see the full statement for yourself, 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]”

Source – [Firewalk Studios]