In a recent statement, Sony announced that it would be closing Neon Koi and Firewalk Studios, alongside confirming that Concord is permanently gone and will not be coming back in any capacity.
The announcement was made in an internal email sent to all employees, but you can find the full contents here. We’ve included some highlights below.
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…
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.
Concord was intended to trailblaze a new Sony IP by tapping into the team hero-shooter market that has been dominated by games like Overwatch and Team Fortress 2. However when it launched, the game saw struggling sales and as a multiplayer game its player base was too small to sustain a diverse ecosystem of players, unable to even reach 1000 players on Steam at its peak.
Sony had invested resources into Concord, including animated vignettes. The company was even so confident that Concord got place in Amazon’s upcoming gaming anthology series Secret Level.
