Firewalk, the American game development studio that was established just six years ago by Activision and Bungie veterans before being acquired by PlayStation in April 2023, is permanently shutting down following the failure of Concord—the first-person hero shooter that launched for both PS5 and Windows PCs in August but performed so badly that it was shut down by Sony a mere two weeks after launch, with all sold copies refunded—according to an internal email that Hermen Hulst distributed yesterday to Sony Interactive Entertainment employees. Hulst, who now serves as the CEO of Sony Interactive Entertainment’s Studio Business Group, also revealed that Neon Koi, one of Sony’s mobile game studios, is being shut down as well despite not having released a game yet. See below for Hulst’s full email, which includes a note about how closing Firewalk was “the best path forward.”
Dear Team,
Today, I want to share some important updates from Sony Interactive Entertainment’s Studio Business Group.
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.
Expanding beyond PlayStation devices and crafting engaging online experiences alongside our single-player games are key focal areas for us as we evolve our revenue streams. We need to be strategic, though, in bringing our games to new platforms and recognize when our games fall short of meeting player expectations.
While mobile remains a priority growth area for the Studio Business, we are in the very early stage of our mobile efforts. To achieve success in this area we need to concentrate on titles that are in-line with PlayStation Studios’ pedigree and have the potential to reach more players globally.
With this re-focused approach, Neon Koi will close, and its mobile action game will not be moving forward. I want to express my gratitude to everyone at Neon Koi for their hard work and endless passion to innovate.
Regarding Firewalk, as announced in early September (An Important Update on Concord), certain aspects of Concord were exceptional, but others did not land with enough players, and as a result we took the game offline. We have spent considerable time these past few months exploring all our options.
After much thought, we have determined the best path forward is to permanently sunset the game and close the studio.   I want to thank all of Firewalk for their craftsmanship, creative spirit and dedication.
The PvP first person shooter genre is a competitive space that’s continuously evolving, and unfortunately, we did not hit our targets with this title. We will take the lessons learned from Concord and continue to advance our live service capabilities to deliver future growth in this area.
I know none of this is easy news to hear, particularly with colleagues and friends departing SIE. Both decisions were given serious thought, and ultimately, we feel they are the right ones to strengthen the organization. Neon Koi and Firewalk were home to many talented individuals, and we will work to find placement for some of those impacted within our global community of studios where possible.
I am a big believer in the benefits of embracing creative experimentation and developing new IP. However, growing through sustainable financials, especially in a challenged economic environment is critical.
While today is a difficult day, there is much to look forward to in the months ahead from the Studio Business Group and our teams. I remain confident that we are building a resilient and capable organization driven by creating unforgettable entertainment experiences for our players.  
Thank you for your continued support.
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Discussion (5 replies)
Join Discussion →Finally Sony has opted to make a good business decision here. Firewalk wasn't working on anything else besides Concord. But to put it in perspective, I did some napkin math on the subject.
ET The Extra Terrestrial was previously regarded as the biggest flop in video game history. This is because the licensing for the IP was supposedly around 20-25 million dollars at the time. Atari 2600 games usually cost somewhere between $3 and $5. It sold 1.8 million copies but that's no where near enough to cover the licensing fees much less the cost of development and manufacturing, distribution etc. of the cartridges.
Concord supposedly cost upwards of 500 million dollars. We know this because Probably Monsters, the previous owner of Firewalk had already sunk 200 million into the game and after nearly five years of development had little to show for it. It's unlikely that Probably Monsters didn't at least get what they had in Firewalk and in Concord back out of it when they sold it to Sony. Though the actual purchase of Firewalk was for an undisclosed sum. Sony found the game in such an poor state that it was forced to assign additional studios to help Firewalk finish the game. It took three years and another 200 plus million dollars to complete.
Concord reportedly sold 25,000 units. PSN numbers for Concord show something like a little over 1,000 concurrent players. For Steam, we know it never broke 697 concurrent players. I'd bet money the "units sold" were physical copies to retailers. Meaning Sony is counting sales to distributors for retail stores and those were not actually copies that made it into the hands of players. If they had actually sold 25,000 units, you'd expect to see at least a few thousand players online concurrently on launch weekend at the very least as people gave the game a chance.
That didn't happen. It's more like they probably sold something like 800 to 1,000 copies on Steam and maybe 1,500 to 2,000 copies on PSN. With those numbers they couldn't justify even keeping the servers online for it. Most likely the servers were probably IaaS type servers from AWS or something and that could cost 10's of thousands of dollars a month per server. At $40 for the game and having no monetization built into the game, there was no way they'd do anything other than bleed cash while they reworked the game.
Given the complaints about the game, they would have needed to improve the graphics, create new multiplayer maps, redesign all the characters, rework the combat to something better than "mediocre" and all those fancy cutscenes, dialogue etc. would need to be redone. In short, the game needs total redevelopment and that would likely cost them another 200 million dollars over the next 18-36 months or more.
Firewalk flat out didn't have the development chops to do any of that or the game wouldn't have been in such an unfinished state when Sony got ahold of the studio. It was never coming back as a free to play game. You can't monetize a game by selling cosmetic items for characters so ugly that it breaks Rule 34.
Rule 34: If it exists, there is porn of it.
Rule 34a: Except Concord. No one wants porn of that.
It's one thing to close the studio, but the execs at SONY who thought Concord was the future should be axed as well. They clearly don't know anything about gaming.
"MadMummy76, post: 90898, member: 1298" wrote:It's one thing to close the studio, but the execs at SONY who thought Concord was the future should be axed as well. They clearly don't know anything about gaming.
I agree with you there. The problem is that I doubt there are many business men on that level that are gamers as well. Obviously, in the course of due diligence they should have grabbed a few real gamers to be a litmus test of sorts for whether or not Probably Monsters and Firewalk really had something with Concord or not. But its my understanding that the game really wasn't even that far along despite the costs and five years of development.
In other words Concord probably wasn't complete enough for them to know if it was good or bad by that point. I doubt that the character designs and concept art are anything close to the final versions. One former developer reported that there was a lot of interference from management and Concord was very much a "design by committee" type situation. The company had a culture of toxic positivity in which no one ever said anything bad about anyone or anything which meant, no one ever got forced to do better and meet the challenge of building a great game.
Sony got taken for a ride by Firewalk and Probably Monsters. How that happened is anyone's guess. My suspicion is that the executives at Sony are simply out of touch with gamers as they are business men and not gamers. If the people at Probably Monsters and Firewalk came across as competent and passionate enough, its fairly easy to see how some business men could believe in what they were selling by the end of a few meetings.
"Dan_D, post: 90899, member: 6" wrote:I agree with you there. The problem is that I doubt there are many business men on that level that are gamers as well. Obviously, in the course of due diligence they should have grabbed a few real gamers to be a litmus test of sorts for whether or not Probably Monsters and Firewalk really had something with Concord or not. But its my understanding that the game really wasn't even that far along despite the costs and five years of development.
In other words Concord probably wasn't complete enough for them to know if it was good or bad by that point. I doubt that the character designs and concept art are anything close to the final versions. One former developer reported that there was a lot of interference from management and Concord was very much a "design by committee" type situation. The company had a culture of toxic positivity in which no one ever said anything bad about anyone or anything which meant, no one ever got forced to do better and meet the challenge of building a great game.
Sony got taken for a ride by Firewalk and Probably Monsters. How that happened is anyone's guess. My suspicion is that the executives at Sony are simply out of touch with gamers as they are business men and not gamers. If the people at Probably Monsters and Firewalk came across as competent and passionate enough, its fairly easy to see how some business men could believe in what they were selling by the end of a few meetings.
I actually read somewhere that one Sony exec was particularly hands on with this game and it was considered to be his pet project. Unfortunately I forgot the name or where I heard this.
"MadMummy76, post: 90901, member: 1298" wrote:I actually read somewhere that one Sony exec was particularly hands on with this game and it was considered to be his pet project. Unfortunately I forgot the name or where I heard this.
I forgot about that. He came from Bungie if I recall correctly. He resigned in the wake of the game's abysmal reception.
Discussion (5 replies)
Join Discussion →Finally Sony has opted to make a good business decision here. Firewalk wasn't working on anything else besides Concord. But to put it in perspective, I did some napkin math on the subject.
ET The Extra Terrestrial was previously regarded as the biggest flop in video game history. This is because the licensing for the IP was supposedly around 20-25 million dollars at the time. Atari 2600 games usually cost somewhere between $3 and $5. It sold 1.8 million copies but that's no where near enough to cover the licensing fees much less the cost of development and manufacturing, distribution etc. of the cartridges.
Concord supposedly cost upwards of 500 million dollars. We know this because Probably Monsters, the previous owner of Firewalk had already sunk 200 million into the game and after nearly five years of development had little to show for it. It's unlikely that Probably Monsters didn't at least get what they had in Firewalk and in Concord back out of it when they sold it to Sony. Though the actual purchase of Firewalk was for an undisclosed sum. Sony found the game in such an poor state that it was forced to assign additional studios to help Firewalk finish the game. It took three years and another 200 plus million dollars to complete.
Concord reportedly sold 25,000 units. PSN numbers for Concord show something like a little over 1,000 concurrent players. For Steam, we know it never broke 697 concurrent players. I'd bet money the "units sold" were physical copies to retailers. Meaning Sony is counting sales to distributors for retail stores and those were not actually copies that made it into the hands of players. If they had actually sold 25,000 units, you'd expect to see at least a few thousand players online concurrently on launch weekend at the very least as people gave the game a chance.
That didn't happen. It's more like they probably sold something like 800 to 1,000 copies on Steam and maybe 1,500 to 2,000 copies on PSN. With those numbers they couldn't justify even keeping the servers online for it. Most likely the servers were probably IaaS type servers from AWS or something and that could cost 10's of thousands of dollars a month per server. At $40 for the game and having no monetization built into the game, there was no way they'd do anything other than bleed cash while they reworked the game.
Given the complaints about the game, they would have needed to improve the graphics, create new multiplayer maps, redesign all the characters, rework the combat to something better than "mediocre" and all those fancy cutscenes, dialogue etc. would need to be redone. In short, the game needs total redevelopment and that would likely cost them another 200 million dollars over the next 18-36 months or more.
Firewalk flat out didn't have the development chops to do any of that or the game wouldn't have been in such an unfinished state when Sony got ahold of the studio. It was never coming back as a free to play game. You can't monetize a game by selling cosmetic items for characters so ugly that it breaks Rule 34.
Rule 34: If it exists, there is porn of it.
Rule 34a: Except Concord. No one wants porn of that.
It's one thing to close the studio, but the execs at SONY who thought Concord was the future should be axed as well. They clearly don't know anything about gaming.
I agree with you there. The problem is that I doubt there are many business men on that level that are gamers as well. Obviously, in the course of due diligence they should have grabbed a few real gamers to be a litmus test of sorts for whether or not Probably Monsters and Firewalk really had something with Concord or not. But its my understanding that the game really wasn't even that far along despite the costs and five years of development.
In other words Concord probably wasn't complete enough for them to know if it was good or bad by that point. I doubt that the character designs and concept art are anything close to the final versions. One former developer reported that there was a lot of interference from management and Concord was very much a "design by committee" type situation. The company had a culture of toxic positivity in which no one ever said anything bad about anyone or anything which meant, no one ever got forced to do better and meet the challenge of building a great game.
Sony got taken for a ride by Firewalk and Probably Monsters. How that happened is anyone's guess. My suspicion is that the executives at Sony are simply out of touch with gamers as they are business men and not gamers. If the people at Probably Monsters and Firewalk came across as competent and passionate enough, its fairly easy to see how some business men could believe in what they were selling by the end of a few meetings.
I actually read somewhere that one Sony exec was particularly hands on with this game and it was considered to be his pet project. Unfortunately I forgot the name or where I heard this.
I forgot about that. He came from Bungie if I recall correctly. He resigned in the wake of the game's abysmal reception.