"Concord servers are now offline. Thank you to all the freegunners who have joined us in the Concord galaxy"
"Concord servers are now offline. Thank you to all the freegunners who have joined us in the Concord galaxy"
Is this the fastest video game death of all time? Not even Lawbreakers died this fast.
Every game executive and investor wants a Fortnight. That's why no matter how many times gamers reject it live service games will continue to be developed. Because AAA games are made for investors not players.
When God of War was popular, they wanted a God of War of their own.
When Call of Duty was popular, they wanted a Call of Duty of their own.
When Overwatch was popular, they wanted a Overwatch of their own.
When Fortnite was popular, everyone wants their own Fortnite.
Rinse and repeat.
Problem with trying to get a Fortnite was that Epic was wanting to get it's own PUBG after realizing that trying to get their own Minecraft was a failed endeavor. They quickly pivoted the game formula from a Minecraft type tower defense to a battle royale game.
Concord should have seen the writing on the wall early on and pivoted it's game into something else thats flavor of the month.
It's not like gamers are rejecting live services as a whole, because there are still quite a lot of successful live service games. And when a live service is successful, it's really successful. So much so that it's worth it to investors to keep gambling on them, one hit can compensate for a dozen flops.
This is the truth people don't want to admit, but Final Fantasy XIV being successful carried square enix through their darkest days when everything wasn't making a profit. Cygames using all the money they got from the granblue gacha to finance an action rpg and a fighting game, etc.
They serve as a safety net, we lost mimimi last year, I don't think anyone would say they made bad games, but they just didn't sell enough so they closed.
You just made me realise I'm a gamer, not a Fortniter. But I probably should've realised that based on my Steam "years of service* and disgustingly large catalogue.
I'm a proven guaranteed money pot, publishers! Make me something good and I give the moneys!
The challenge is that requires creativity. Creativity isn't a stable investment.
Viva La indie game studio!
Did this post receive more engagement than the game itself?...
Even if it's an absolute shit game.
This game could be a great resource about what not to do.
Didn't they give out refunds? That seems like the right thing to do when a massively multiplayer game is dead on arrival.
Yeah, they did handle it correctly. All things considered. Even in an utopian future where the stopkillinggames.com campaign is successful. Personally I would still prefer to keep all games alive.
It's definitely not the fastest but it's really close.
The fastest full shutdown currently belongs to The Culling 2 which only lasted 2 days between launch and being closed completely.
The Day Before is another big example of a game that lasted an incredibly short time but despite that game lasting 4 days before no longer being sold, the games servers stayed on much longer than that meaning that it was shut down after Concord despite being cancelled before it.
Why did culling 2 fail? Wasn't the first game pretty big?
Including joke reviews, the game had a 16% rating and was so poorly made that within those 2 days it killed the popularity of both Culling games extremely quickly.
The first game was popular because it was a twist on the genre while the 2nd one was a quickly thrown together (almost exact) clone of DayZ.
The word scam was thrown around a lot in those 2 days.
Is this the fastest video game death of all time? Not even Lawbreakers died this fast.
The Day Before only made it 4 days.
On 11 December, four days after The Day Before launched to widespread criticism, Fntastic announced their closure, stating that as their game had "failed financially" they could not afford to continue operating. The Day Before was removed from sale on Steam later that day.
It remained online for six weeks, though.
And they didn't have quite the same budget
Day Before was basically a scam though, and they kept the servers up for a few weeks.
By all accounts this was a real game. It's just that nobody wanted to play it.
In the last 2 years we've seen these live-service games fail at launch time and time and time again. The execs need to just accept that Fortnite already exists and you can't force that kind of success.
The Culling 2 shut down completely in just 2 days
Exec 1: Should we do research into what gamers want to play?
Exec 2: Nah, just smush together whatever everybody else is doing, slap on a new coat of paint, and then ship that shit. The idiots will eat it up and we'll be rich.
Gamers: Who asked for this? I didn't ask for this. I don't want to play this shit. I've got better shit that I can play for free.
Exec 1 & 2:
There have definitely been times that copying other people worked out well.
Fortnite and Apex copied the BR trend when PUBG wasn't satisfying everyone's needs. The former even lazily reskinned a zombie defense game for the battle royale approach. Lots of games reskin the theme of Dark Souls and do okay.
Even if it's lazy or uninventive, once in a while one of those reskins has a particular element of the concept it reinvents in a much better way. Seems Concord never came up with any such ideas, which could have been great since many people are currently tired of Overwatch specifically.
Those aren't re-skins though, they just used the battle royals game type as their main game type.
I can't really think of a similar game to fortnite before it in regards to the combination of building and competitive shooter, although I'm sure someone can point out an early example, and Apex is smashing together counterstrike and maybe overwatch or something similar for the gameplay.
Personally I don't think apex would have worked if it just looked like a re-skin but its got a lot of great artwork and the level designs are interesting at least to me.
Also fortnite has become the everything game, they have Lego and rocket racing and a guitar hero minigame, its sort of gone wild IMO.
So funny when a corpo is forced to seem positive about something where there is absolutely no positive way of spinning it. It has this surreal energy where the person doing PR seems almost uncanny, like some kind of lizard person.
I'm not entirely oblivious to gaming news, but the literal first I had ever heard of this game was when they announced that it was being shut down. Methinks after eight years of development it could've had a few more dollars tossed into the marketing budget.
Word of mouth of something great/fun and exciting should be all the marketing a company really needs. I personally don't trust or listen to any ads. They are cancer to the brain and eyes/ears because it's typically lies or false claims...or they make cinematic trailers which don't even represent the game at all because... cinematic.
See stardew valley for a prime example.
I don't think this game even lasted long enough for word of mouth to have popularized it. I didn't hear about it until it was dead. I am wondering how many players Helldivers 2 had at 11 days (not a great example because it was an existing IP with existing fans). Could they have made it if the game had actually been good? I am not sure. Shutting down super fast got them more publicity than anything else they did.
I'm not saying that would be a better experience for players, just that if they wanted it to succeed they should probably have done more marketing.
That can even be a guide to many things like tools, if it's pricy but has good word of mouth and not heavily advertised (sometimes the biggest expense) then it might just be worth the cash
It was featured in a PlayStation showcase last year. The most notable part of the trailer was a burger. I’m not kidding.
That's....remarkable.
Yeah, they definitely didn't market it very well, at least to the PC crowd. It seems the PlayStation version is doing much better, with advertisements in the PSN store.
I keep seeing character trailer on youtube but it doesn't really intrigue me as it looks like another hero shooter.
it really lasted less time than liz truss
i think it's exactly 1 scaramucci
I'm really happy that the one time I got to visit the UK was during Liz Truss' time in office. It was wild seeing the protestors, and when I landed back at home I heard she was gone.
It's like the UK decided to be welcoming by putting up a whole Chaotic Prime Minister just for the benefit of your visit.
All 15 of them
Being a little generous there, bud
I love how it's worded like concord is a beloved game that is shutting down after a decade
To the people that worked on it, even when the result kinda sucks, there's some level of attachment. They spent literal years of their life investing into it. That might be where the tone is coming from.
Imagine working years on something and every time leadership has a meeting they keep asking you to add even more bullshit or change some stupid stuff. Must suck to be a game dev, I feel for them.
I didn’t know it existed until a popular streamer begrudgingly “reviewed” it at the last minute. Found it strange that there was zero marketing for such an expensive and long developed investment.
My guess is that they knew it was going to be a shit game, but realized too deep in the development phase. So they just released it as soon as possible and didn't waste more money on it (marketing). My guess is that the released it instead of cancel just in case they were wrong and people actually liked it.
Honestly this reeks of corporate politics. I'm willing to bet at some point in development there was a regime change, and current management pushed this out the door just to clear the board.
Everything I heard about this came seems to indicate that it isn't terrible by any means, just mediocre and overpriced in an absolutely oversaturated genre. If management was invested in it, they probably could have spent a ton on marketing, achieved middling numbers, and then used those middling numbers to justify continued development for another few months.
I'm confident in saying that because there are a handful of shitty live service games being operated at a loss for no real reason other than shutting them down would mean management would have to actually admit they fucked up.
Holy hell that was quick from the announcement to shut down. Did they have a 2 week free trial on the servers so they had to get out today?
It's a shame. This was exactly the game my husband was looking for - Overwatch minus Blizzard
Have him try deadlock. Valve is a much better option.
Oh don't worry, there's going to be more.
A lot of companies are working on live service games in hope of being the next overwatch/destiny.
Some even have multiple (like Sony) in the hope that even one of them takes off.
Aside from all of the problems with the game itself, I think they must've had one of the most unfortunate launch moments. Hero shooters had been pretty much on the downturn and then just before they launched, Deadlock went public and suckered quite a lot of the hero shooter audience into playing a full-on MOBA/FPS hybrid. And Deadlock is very quietly breaking all kinds of silly records for what's technically an invite-only alpha (currently #8 on Steam's most played with 137k concurrent players).
Spawn killed
It's okay. They'll try again.
Honestly. I kinda would have liked to try concord, but I sure as shit wasn't going to pay to try it.
The game had an open beta and only 2 thousand people played it, no one cared.
Seems like they should change their now-impossible username.
So did anyone manage to platinum it?
I heard from someone on Discord that there are 7 platinums.
Not sure if that's wholly factual, but if so those are the rarest plats...ever?
Looks like 17. Doubt they had much fun at the end.
Freegunners never die, hell yeah 😎 fucking cool tweet
360 noscope tool-assisted speedrun
What about Anthem?
Anthem kept the servers going longer, it got some updates and EA even promised an entire rework akin to No Man's Sky, but EA being EA they never delivered it and just cancelled everything lol.
All ten of them
Anyone who paid any more for this game should get their money back immediately.
They are. The makers announced refunds along with the cancellation.