This game is like that one crawler zombie you leave alive at the end of the round so your teammates can heal and get the raygun… But, I digress. Last week, a pre-release build of Firewalk Studio’s Concord was leaked online. The most recent date on this build (November 14th, 2023) was very close to the game’s release date, which hit store shelves in August of 2024; thus making the unfinished state of this game abundantly obvious.
It is unknown at this time if this build is what made it to market or not. If it is, however, this would explain why Sony was quick to delist the game and refund players.
Concord performed so poorly that Sony ended up delisting the game, shutting down the online play servers, and refunding players. Finally, Firewalk Studios — who had birthed the original concept for Concord before being bought by Sony in 2023 —met it’s end a little more than a year after that acquisition.
Firewalk’s pride and joy was supposed to be Sony’s new flagship franchise, multiple entertainment production companies were hired to create supporting media for Concord‘s expected rise to global acclaim. The studio’s inner workings were Utopian, critique and resistance to ‘stunning’ and ‘brave’ ideas had nearly vanished from workflow discussions. Individuals who observed the collapse of Firewalk Studios attributed the term ‘toxic positivity’ to its respective workplace environment. Sony employees tasked with overseeing the game reportedly gaslit the developers, reassuring them that Concord would be a Star Wars-like project.
Video Games Chronicle reports that the leak, titled ‘FWChaos,’ isn’t playable, and this is due to the lack of Sony digital infrastructure to make the build functional. However, the Main menu, galactic guide, crew roster and profiles, job board, settings menu, and the developer tools needed for skill-based matchmaking are functional. Although, to what extent is unknown at this time.
In an age of free-to-play hero shooters, that even Overwatch 2 succumbed to, Concord‘s $40 agenda driven half-baked gaming experience was destined to fail. The question that lingers is why this game was allowed to balloon into a financial Hindenburg — a question that can’t even be answered by Sony President Hiroki Totoki, who stated on an earnings call that the global games publisher is “still in the process of learning” from Concord‘s failure. Which seems quite jarring considering that the character roster alone was roasted by netizens since they were revealed; arguably even now the Freerunners of Concord serve as a punchline for off-putting character designs.
Before you’re tempted to download FWChaos, please be aware this is not an official release. Due to Sony’s scorched-earth public relations policy, employed shortly after refunding players of Concord, the legal status of this pre-release build is nebulous.
The leaker may have either been on the inside of Firewalk or have come across this in some strange pocket of Sony’s greater communications network; but the point still stands, this is not a legal release of Concord. As of publishing, it is unknown whether Sony will pursue legal action; similar to what we saw with the Gamefreak hack in 2024.
Although Sony and Firewalk’s intent was to create an “inclusive” space for players, the bitter end of Concord has become the shining example of the plague that agenda-driven entertainment has delivered onto the gaming industry. The lessons that Sony will take away from this are not the ones that the market will inherit from it. Games like Concord, in whatever form they take, now have a much higher threshold to reach before success can even be measured.
Though outlets such as VGC have tested FWChaos, and verified the authenticity of the pre-release build, the author of this written piece stresses to you, once again, that this isn’t legally distributed material. Interacting with it beyond articles, discussions, or YouTube videos may result in legal repercussions.
Good luck out there.
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