“Doom” is a rather unique word in the gaming space. Not only is it the name of a beloved F.P.S. shooter that will be getting a new title next year, but it’s a word that honestly very rarely describes a brand-new game before its launch. After all, there are some games that surprise people with how well they do, or how quality they are upon launch. It’s okay to be surprised by these things! However, when it came to Sony’s live-service shooter Concord, fans knew from the beginning that this game wasn’t going to do well, and those thoughts turned out to be prophetic.
As you know, Concord is shutting down, and that announcement came just 11 days after its release. There’s “doomed,” and then there’s “D.O.A.” There were some reports stating that the title didn’t even sell over 10K units across all platforms! Needless to say, this was a huge failure on Sony’s part, and many are wondering how this was even allowed to be released when “all the signs were there” that this wasn’t going to work.
However, on the more positive side of things, while the game itself is about to die, many are reaching out to the team at Firewalk to note how sad they are for them and encourage them to keep fighting. One of the dev team went onto Twitter to post how they were “proud” of the game and that it got released:
Adding to that heartwarming moment were multiple gamers replying to the statement by noting how the game was fun in their eyes and thanking Hugh for this work on the title.
Another member of the dev team stated that the group was “full of fighters” and that this wouldn’t stop them from making great games:
Then, there was the co-founder of Arkane Lyon, who did his best to praise the team while noting, “This too shall pass.”
The reason this matters is two-fold. First, it shows that the Firewalk team isn’t beating themselves up about something truly outside their control. There’s no way they could’ve known that the title would do this badly, nor that they would be shut down before they could try and fix things to spur growth.
Second, it shows how the video game community supports other developers when times get hard. They’re all in this together in many ways, and reaching out with words like these can be a big deal.
