Sony has announced that they are closing Concord developer Firewalk Studios, just a year and a half after acquiring the studio in April 2023.
In addition to Firewalk Studios, Sony is also shutting down mobile game developer Neon Koi who was acquired in 2022. Bloomberg News reports that a total of 210 employees will be losing their jobs as part of these closures, with 172 coming from Firewalk Studios and 38 coming from Neon Koi. Sony says they intend to support the developers at both teams in finding new positions across their other first-party teams where possible.
This news was shared with Sony’s first-party studios yesterday in an internal email by the CEO of Sony Interactive Entertainment’s Business Group, Hermen Hulst. “We consistently evaluate our games portfolio and status of our projects to ensure we are meeting near and long-term business priorities. As part of our ongoing efforts to strengthen SIE’s Studio Business, we have had to make a difficult decision relating to two of our studios – Neon Koi and Firewalk Studios.”
Speaking to the closure of Neon Koi, Hulst said that while the mobile space is still an area that Sony is focused on growing in, the company needs to “concentrate on titles that are in-line with PlayStation Studios’ pedigree and have the potential to reach more players globally.” Neon Koi was working on an action game at the time of their closure and had not released any games prior to this news.
As for Firewalk’s closure, it ultimately comes down to the unprecedented failure of Concord in a crowded field. While Hulst says that Sony and Firewalk took time “exploring all our options” regarding a path forward for the game and studio, the best decision was to bring it all to an end. Sony’s claiming that the loss of Firewalk and Concord won’t be in vain though. “We will take the lessons learned from Concord and continue to advance our live service capabilities to deliver future growth in this area.”
Rumors about the budget behind Concord have spread in the weeks since it was pulled from sale. According to the latest report from Kotaku, the initial development deal for it was a bit over $200 million. This was reportedly enough to cover the development of the game, but did not include the IP rights for Concord or the purchase of the studio itself.
Both closures are disappointing as Neon Koi and Firewalk Studios deserved better. They were purchased to further Sony’s mobile and live-service ambitions and were promptly shut down without getting much of a chance, especially in Neon Koi’s case as they never put out a game. These closures are an indictment on the current state of the games industry, with one failure being enough to sink a studio completely nowadays (if you can get to that point).
This causes Sony’s statements about using what happened with Concord to advance their live-service capabilities to feel somewhat like a slap in the face after everything Firewalk went through. They were a team that had a solid game on their hands that unfortunately didn’t get a chance to shine like it should’ve. Firewalk took to social media to deliver one last message in light of the studio’s closure, thanking fans and detailing their team’s journey.
I also can’t help but think back on my thoughts regarding the future of Sony’s live service plans. Like I said then, I firmly believe that Sony’s going to pump the brakes on their plans beyond the ones that are currently in development: Marathon, Fairgame$, Bungie’s Gummy Bear project, and the Horizon multiplayer game. Only time will tell, but for now, we have two more development studios shut down and hundreds of unemployed developers dropped without a care in the world.
TheComfySpot 