A game that cost an estimated $200m to create, and took eight years to develop, has been described as the “biggest entertainment flop” of all time.
Richard Osman and Marina Hyde were discussing Sony’s recently withdrawn shooter video game, Concord, on today’s episode of The Rest is Entertainment podcast (September 24).
It was released last month on August 23, but Marina explained that it had been withdrawn “within a week” and that it would “not come back” and had “no money”.
Richard said: “They thought that the biggest entertainment flop this year was going to be Suicide Squad – also brought out a live service game and that absolutely crashed and burned as well. They reckon that lost 200 million.”
Marina said: “I would argue, and this is a big swing, but this could be the biggest entertainment flop of all time, okay? Because it has got no money.”
Earlier in the episode, Richard said: “There’s been big games this year; Helldivers 2 was big this year but the one that came out very recently, which is Concord – eight years it’s taken. I mean, tens of millions of pounds.”
He then revealed that as of 9:30am that morning, Counter-Strike had 634,000 consecutive plays on Steam, whereas the most amount of people who played Concord concurrently was 697.
Marina said: “The most who were playing those first days of Black Myth: Wukong were 2.5 million concurrent, right? And you also had to pay $40 or whatever it cost in the UK for this…for Concord.”
She continued: “A lot of the games in this space are free and there might be things you buy within game, but I think that is absolutely extraordinary.
“To put this into perspective, they have withdrawn it from the market within a week. It will not come back and people are being refunded.”
The online PlayStation 5 and PC shooter struggled to establish players and was taken offline by Sony on September 6, according to the Economic Times.
Concord was hailed as a rival to successful games like Overwatch and Valorant, but it landed mixed reviews and was then taken offline due to its poor sales.
In September, gamers were urged to return their copies of Concord to the shops they bought them from if they purchased a boxed game from Amazon, Argos, Currys, GAME, or supermarkets like Asda.
A statement issued by Sony said: “Concord fans — we’ve been listening closely to your feedback since the launch of Concord on PlayStation 5 and PC and want to thank everyone who has joined the journey aboard the Northstar.”
It went on to say that the fans’ “support” and the “passionate community” that grew around the game “meant the world to us”. In addition, it claimed that “many qualities of the experience resonated with players.”
However, they also claimed that “other aspects of the game” and the initial launch “didn’t land the way we’d intended” and they’d “decided to take the game offline”.
