Concord seems to have an unusually extended epilogue, months after Sony already shut the game down for good.
Concord was a hero shooter published by Sony for PlayStation 5 and Steam, made by Firewalk Studios. As even its own Wikipedia page states, multiple game press outlets consider the game one of the biggest failures in video game history. That’s regardless of the debate on what parameters that should be measured by, and especially if certain rumors about its development should be believed.
What we do know to be a factual matter of public record is that the game started life as one of several incubation projects under a company that was not Sony. As YouTuber Michael Bell explained, ProbablyMonsters was set up to start production of video games, but not complete them.
ProbablyMonsters’ business is game incubation. They would put together projects and teams to make games, and then pitch those games to potential publishers. To date, their biggest success in this endeavor is Concord, as they were able to sell the game and its developer Firewalk Studios to Sony.
While one would be led to believe that ProbablyMonsters got one over Sony, the reality isn’t really that great for them. Other games they had in development, such as Battle Barge, stalled and also couldn’t find a buyer or publisher the way Concord did.
This company once managed to raise $ 250 million on a single round of Series A capital funding. After cancelling Battle Barge last year, they laid off 50 employees. That’s as palpable a fall from grace as it gets, but it just got worse.
As reported by GameDeveloper, ProbablyMonsters just started another round of layoffs. The company will not comment on this when asked, but several former employees revealed that they were laid off on their LinkedIn profiles.
As the company has chosen not to comment, we don’t have enough information to assess if ProbablyMonsters is simply in the process of reconstructing itself into a smaller company, or if it’s in peril of bankruptcy or closure. We also can’t fault them in particular in the current business environment where game companies big and small have been forced to react to slowing growth with layoffs and studio closures.
But it certainly raises questions if ProbablyMonsters has a future in the industry. The one project they were able to sell crashed and burned in spectacular fashion, but also, Battle Barge and other projects didn’t appeal to publishers for them to pick up.
But this is the same environment where Bandai Namco Europe was willing to take a chance on Unknown 9, and is now taking a chance on The Blood of Dawnwalker. So it’s not that publishers aren’t willing to take risks anymore. They just have no interest in ProbablyMonsters’ projects.
We can’t predict ProbablyMonsters’ future, or that of their employees. But for now, we wish the best for ProbablyMonsters current and exiting employees, and we hope those who have left will successfully find placement back in the video game industry.