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GRTV News - Concord is being taken offline with refunds being issued
The multiplayer game is facing a very uncertain future despite only launching two weeks ago.
Audio transcription
"Hello everyone and welcome back to another episode of GRTV News. Today we're talking about what could be one of the biggest bombshells of the entire year. You've probably already heard about it at this point, but yeah, Concorde is being taken offline. There is a chance it will be back. The way that the statement talking about this decision was worded does imply that there could be a chance that Concorde will come back. Although, when a game that is not fully priced, but when a game that is expensive, is taken offline after less than two weeks from launch, it's usually quite rare that they come back. But there is a chance."
"So we'll get into all the intricacies about this decision right now and yeah, talk a little bit about it. So Concorde to be taken offline less than two weeks after launch, refunds to be issued. Firewalk admits our initial launch didn't land the way we intended. So we've heard some really shocking things about Concorde following its launch at the end of August. Very recently, it was noted that the game sold incredibly poorly with around 25,000 units shipped in its first week. And seemingly, there was some truth to this because now Sony and Firewalk has dropped a bombshell and basically admitted that the game has failed to what it set out to achieve. In a new PlayStation blog post, game director Ryan Ellis states Concorde fans, we've been listening closely to your feedback since the launch of Concorde on PlayStation 5 and PC and want to thank everyone who's joined the journey aboard the North Star. Your support and the passionate community that has grown around the game has meant the world to us. However, while many qualities of the experience resonated with players, we also recognize that other aspects of the game and our initial launch didn't land the way we'd intended. Therefore, at this time, we've decided to take the game offline beginning September 6th, 2024 and explore options, including those that will better reach our players. Yep, that's right. Concorde is being taken offline and basically shut down. It's unclear if this will be a permanent shutdown or simply temporary while the studio explores the other options. Ellis notes in the above statement, but considering Concorde has barely had two weeks in the wild, it's hard to see this as anything other than a catastrophic failure and likely the end of this live service project. For the few who picked up a copy of Concorde and are wondering what this means for them, full refunds are being issued. If you purchase through the PlayStation Store or direct, the refunds will go straight back into the account you used to acquire the game. For Steam users, Steam will send refund confirmation in the coming days and for Epic Game Store users, the same process will apply. Other retailers will also have their own methods of returning the funds back to the purchaser."
"It should be noted, however, that if you do have the slightest bit of faith that Concorde will one day return, you shouldn't refund it now, as once that has gone through, you will lose access to the game. The blog post signs off with, we'll keep you updated and thank you again to all the freegoers who have joined us in the Concorde galaxy. RIP Concorde, August 23rd, 2024 to September 3rd, 2024."
"So yes, Concorde is going offline. It's easy to want to say Concorde is being killed off essentially, but that's not what has been confirmed yet. It's simply being taken offline.
There is, I would say, a large chance that we never see Concorde again and that that is the end of the game. But at the same time, they've left the door open there to figuring out ways that they can sort of redo the game and bring it back. I think that for a game like Concorde that has taken so many years to develop, you know, it started development back when the sort of live service craze was really booming, when games like Overwatch were winning game of the year, when Fortnite went from like 1 million to 35 million concurrent players in the space of like two weeks. This is a game that was conceived around that time period and it's taken, you know, six, seven, eight years, whatever, to develop and to launch. Now, anyone that's played Concorde will know that it has pretty solid bones, but it's also a pretty run-of-the-mill hero shooter and it's a game that is asking players to come from other established hero shooters that they've known for years and still play and all of a sudden pick up something different. Again, bear in mind as well that while it has a lot of content at launch, it requires an investment to pick it up, you know, it's a $40 game. I don't know how much it is in actually pound, I think it's about £32 or something like that, which, you know, when you compare it to the other hero shooters that are out there, that many of them are free to play, you already have to commit a lot of money to be able to get into the Concorde experience from the get-go. So when you match that all up and the fact that PlayStation basically did zero marketing for Concorde, it has a structure that doesn't really... well, a structure that sort of feels the exact same as Overwatch when it launched, where it's like, here's a great gameplay experience, but there's literally nothing tied it all together. And, you know, that was fine for Overwatch six, seven, eight years ago, whatever, because Overwatch was all fresh and new then, but Concorde isn't that. So I think that for them to go away and to change Concorde and to effectively relaunch it in the future, it's going to be a long and tedious process, it's going to be an expensive process, and I would assume that we'll probably, after maybe six months or so of them trying to figure out how to do it in a cost-effective manner, we'll just pull the plug in the game and then we will never see it again."
"But again, that hasn't been confirmed yet, so we'll have to stay tuned and wait for more further information from Sony and from Firewalk Studios about what the official plan will be for Concorde going down the line. But as we do know about that information, we should keep you posted and updated, so stay tuned. Otherwise, though, the key thing to take is that if you have picked up a copy of Concorde, starting Friday, September 6th, you will not be able to play it, the game is going offline. So yeah, you can refund it, you can get your money back for the game, or alternatively, you can hold on to the game if you're still confident that eventually it will one day return. But yeah, that's the big news of the day, and arguably, it could go down as one of the biggest flops and one of the biggest bombs of all time in the video game space, so pretty big news. But yeah, this has been all the time I have in today's episode of GRTV News, but I'll be back now tomorrow for the next one of the week, so until then, thank you for watching, and I'll see you on the next one. Take care, everyone."
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