Jesus christ
Oof. Pivoting to free to play then, or at least a PSPlus relaunch.
Haha holy shit that was fast. Stop shoving live service down your customers fucking throats maybe, sony?
Don’t worry, they’ll try again with the next “game”
So to recap:
- 200 million dollars
- 8 years of development
- Sony shuts down all of their Japanese studios and redirects their efforts into developing “cinematic” experiences to appeal to western gamers
- Sony liquidates countless other studios in the pursuit of funding this game
- Sony buys Bungie to aid in developing this game
- Sony thinks this is going to be a huge success rivaling COD and Fortnite, so they fund an entire multimillion dollar CGI-animated episode to be aired in Amazon’s Secret Level anthology series
- Shuts down in 10 days
- Sony refunds everyone
Man, Sony is taking L’s like a motherfucker.
200 million sounds like a lot, but it’s like 2 weeks of PSPlus money.
For all this losing, they’re sure making a lot of money. Just not out of this game.
And that money ain’t gone yet, there’s for sure a pivot towards a F2P, MTX ridden version of the game to be relaunched.
The problem is that gamers say they don’t like that sort of thing, while the success of the likes of Fortnite indicates that there’s a lot of gamers out there saying nothing, but buying V-bucks like a motherfucker.
Sony shuts down all of their Japanese studios and redirects their efforts into developing “cinematic” experiences to appeal to western gamers
They shut down Japan Studio, that’s a name, they still have studios in Japan.
“Refunds for PlayStation Store and PlayStation Direct purchases may take 30-60 days to appear on your bank statement”
Why do companies do this? They can process millions of dollars of incoming payments instantly, but take up to 2 months to reverse? Give me a break.
Bank transfers are slow. It is generally taken out of the account the next business day, sits in escrow for a few days, then appears in the destination account. About a week.
Though, if it gets held for suspected fraud or needs to cross international boundaries, it can sit in that escrow account for much longer.
In the EU we use SEPA and transfers are instantaneous. Used it when buying something of our local ebay when at the person’s house. Also most banks even have Venmo style payment systems… scan qr of your bank, click on my banks icon, authorize, done.
Companies sit on cash simply for cashflow reasons. Keeping the money in your account for an additional x days means it can be used for other stuff.
Sounds like I should start holding my payments in escrow, just in case the publisher decides to shut down their game less than 2 weeks after taking my money. Got it!
The company I work for does B2B and clients do the same shit. 45-90 day pay cycle after invoicing. That shit kills smaller businesses.
Your card is charged instantly, but it can take a week or two before it’s cleared the fed’s anti-fraud measures and they’re assured you’re not reversing it through your bank. Then they send the refund and it can take another week or two before your bank clears it and makes sure that they’re not reversing their payment. Add in some wiggle room to cover yourself in case something gets flagged as potentially fraudulent and someone has to manually review it, and it can take a while.
In practice, refunds should arrive this week, but they want to be careful not to promise that in every case. What they’re mainly worried about is people buying the game, immediately refunding it, and simultaneously doing a chargeback while in some faraway country.
If it wasn’t for hundreds of people likely losing their jobs it would be really funny that Sony’s greedy, cynical attempts to cash in on the live service fad keep failing
I want to paint easy villains into the world as much as anyone, but I didn’t see anything especially “evil” about Concord; just poorly planned and uninteresting. It’s more of a tragic failure of incompetence than anyone being greedy or hurtful.
I don’t think the parent comment was trying to say that it’s particularly evil. They rather meant “greedy” in the sense that these companies get a bit too excited about money.
Basically, live service games are pretty expensive to make and generally result in an incomplete/worse experience at launch. But if they’re successful and gain enough of a player base, then they pay for themselves manyfold.
That’s why these companies keep on gambling, by building live service games, rather than two or three smaller games from the same budget.
It’s probably not even the artists fault it turned out this shit. My gut feeling is that the game is victim of incompetent leadership. Indecisiveness on important matters and micro management on stupid things.
It’s also the same incompetent leadership who will get bonuses and promotions after this.
Was it shit?
Shit in terms of having no players and being pulled back after just two weeks.
From what I understand, the game itself was alright. It had no major technical or gameplay problems. At least the team of programmers and game designers were competent.
The main issue is that the game was incredibly unappealing, and I believe this can only come from poor leadership.
Is that not a game designer thing?
Do they lose their jobs?
They delivered the product, they got paid for their work.
I can’t imagine hundreds of people still working on the game beyond release. They’ll probably move on to different projects.
A failure this monumental will almost certainly result in Sony taking the entire studio out back and shooting it, just to placate investors.
Edit: For context, Sony owns Firewalk - the studio - outright, they’re not just the publisher.
Most big game corps just shutter studios, usually letting them know via the grapevine after a board meeting or twitter post…
Will the industry learn any lesson from this?
(no)
“Clearly, the game would have worked if the characters would have looked like monkeys!”
Wait, are they still making beyond good and evil 2?
I dunno, I might buy a reboot of DK64’s versus mode.
“Let’s all laugh at an industry / that never learns anything, tee-hee-hee.”
–Yahtzee Croshaw
The age of DRM means that they can now “unlaunch” the game and force you into a reimbursement while giving up the game. Why? What if someone liked it and wanted to keep playing? is this an online only game? This is just sad.
It is an online-only game.
So ?
So the person I responded to asked if it was.
And you think it’s cool to just go around answering questions all Willy nilly?
I know, how dare they?! Wait, am I allowed to respond in agreement with you???
No. No agreeing. Only bitching.
There is, however, a financial barrier. One that benefits Sony in no way. Clearly no one wants to play this game anyway. Let it die.
Done!
It looked like every other generic hero shooter on the market. They were late about 6 years or so.
With an even more generic art direction.
And PSN requirement for PC gamers.
Every other generic hero shooter but not free
I can’t even name another apart from Overwatch.
Unless you’re counting each hero as “soldier with a slightly different machine gun”.
- Apex Legends
- Team Fortress 2
- Paladins
- Dirty Bomb
- Battleborn
- Gigantic
- Monday Night Combat
- Deceive Inc.
to name few
Dirty Bomb, Monday Night Combat
These aren’t even hero shooters. They’re just basic arena shooters. Unless they have drastically changed since they released (which was the last time I played either).
Apex Legends is a battle royale, Gigantic and Battleborn are (were) more like MOBAs, Paladins and Dirty Bomb don’t work on linux. I haven’t played all of these games, but I don’t think they’re as interchangeable as you’re implying.
Get fucked
The game was alive for about 1.5 days for each year of development that they put into Concord.
Let’s acknowledge for a second that well over 100 developers are about to lose their livelihoods. Now let’s acknowledge that they were building a product from the start that disrespects consumer rights and preservation of the medium, and I’m still glad it failed.
Chose a publisher as your leader in business? Well we know how that goes.
Those artists and programmers had about six years to find different jobs in the industry, I have zero sympathy for the ones that stuck around and did not see the writing on the wall.
Kekw
I can never tell if it’s new gen z word or a spasm of some sort
Kekw is deeper internet slang than most people are willing to discover. Kek is like a giggle or snort, not a full laugh but a chuckle. The w modifier means this is a win for them, so kekw is a chuckle about a good situation. If you want more info you can ask someone on 4chan, they are super helpful and nice to new members of the community.
Yeah, they’re very helpful over there. You can learn a lot from them. But also:
Being young enough to believe that kekw is just some 4chan tier slang.
It seems all knowledge shall become lost in the eternal shadow of an aging timeline.
Ik it’s not, but the only place you see it regularly is 4chan.
?
Game Preservationists When a Game Sucks:
“Good I’m glad it’s gone.”
One of these days, it’s going to teach them to stop making games designed to destroy themselves. Preservation needs to be good for business, and the lack of it needs to be bad for business.
Eh, there is no such thing as preserving a live service game. Lots of OW1 copies on disc that are coasters now
If Concord doesn’t see a F2P re-release, it will DEFINITELY be some highly-sought cultural relic in the future
Can’t help but wonder if this would have been a hit if it was F2P rather?
With the amount of marketing it received, I think people would still stick to Valorent or Overwatch 2. I only see videos and posts about Concord being a flop, than promoting it.
Remove from sale. Add more monetisation features. Rerelease as F2P. Cross fingers and hope for best.
The Multiversus approach!
