Sony has decided to shut down Firewalk Studios, the studio behind the PlayStation game Concord, which went offline last month after its disastrous launch. In a letter to PlayStation employees, Hermen Hulst, CEO of the PlayStation Studio Business Group, said Firewalk Studios will close along with Neon Koi, a mobile gaming studio. Bloomberg reported that the closures will affect about 210 jobs.
“We’ve spent a lot of time over the past few months exploring all of our options,” Holst says. “After much consideration, we have decided that the best path forward is to permanently pause the game and close the studio. I would like to thank everyone at Firewalk for their ingenuity, creative spirit, and dedication.
Holst says Concord fell short of Sony’s goals and that the PlayStation maker “will take the lessons learned from Concord and continue to develop our live service capabilities for future growth in this area.”
Concord debuted on August 23 on both PS5 and PC, but Sony pulled the plug on the game on September 6 after poor sales of the game. Estimates put sales at less than 25,000, and Concord only managed to reach an all-time high of just 697 players on Steam, which is below the peak of The Lord of the Rings: Gollum’s launch.
Sony’s mobile game development studio Neon Koi has also closed, although Holst said that “mobile remains a priority growth area.” The German-Finnish studio was originally acquired by Sony when it was known as Savage Game Studios in 2022, and the team was working on an unannounced action game for the Triple-A mobile live service.
“With this refocused approach, Neon Koi will shut down, and its mobile action game will not move forward,” Holst says. “Both decisions have been given serious thought and, ultimately, we feel they are the right decision to strengthen the organization.”
Some of the affected developers may find roles at other Sony studios, but the rest will join thousands in the gaming industry who have been laid off over the past two years.
Update, October 29: Added Bloomberg reports on the number of jobs affected.
