Concord developers caught bragging before releasing Sony's $400 million failure

Concord was one of the biggest gaming release fails in recent memory, with the title attracting almost no attention during its first weekend on Steam (697 concurrent players), and ultimately Sony choosing to refund all gamers who purchased the $40 due to the title failing to reach critical mass for it to be viable.

Now, new information in the form of rumors has popped up, and if the rumors are true, the situation at Concord's developers Firewalk Studios will be much worse than initially anticipated. According to Colin Moriarty, a former video game journalist at IGN and now owner of Last Stand Media, sources have informed him Sony spent an astonishing $400 million on developing the game, with $200 million spent to get the game to an alpha in 2023, and another $200 million on outside developers to finish it off by its release.

Moriarty said Sony paid for most of Concord's budget and that it's the biggest budget of any game Sony has released, making the release of Concord Sony's biggest loss ever on a single game. Moriarty said internally Concord was referred to as "The Future of PlayStation" and that Sony believed it was a Star Wars-like project that would generate money for many years to come. An example of this would be episodic releases of the Concord cutscenes.

• Read more: Former Concord developer responds to claims Bungie's Marathon is Concord 2

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Moreover, the former gaming journalist said the environment at Firewalk Studios was "toxic positivity," and that developers weren't allowed to say anything negative about the game. More specifically, Moriarty pointed out Hermen Hulst, CEO of Sony Interactive Entertainment Studio Business Group, as being a champion of Concord and that the title was "his baby".

These allegations were corroborated by Ethan Gach from Kotaku, who took to X and said, "I can corroborate the part about toxic positivity. Some sources I've spoken with blamed a head in the sand mentality carried over from the studio's Bungie roots. A sense the game would come together because the team was too good to fail. I'll have more next week."

Moriarty added the $400 million it cost to develop Concord didn't include how much Sony spent purchasing Firewalk Studios from ProbablyMonsters, a company headed by veterans of the gaming industry and headed by former Bungie chairman, president, and CEO Harold Rya. Firewalk was established in 2018 by veterans of Bungie and Activision, including former Activision executive Tony Hsu and former Bungie creative director Ryan Ellis, who both worked on Destiny. Sony officially entered into a partnership with the developer in 2021, bringing Concord under its PlayStation Studios banner, and in 2023, Firewalk was sold to Sony.

Cross-referencing the rumored timeline with the official dates, adding in the rumored "toxic positivity" of the workplace and the market reaction to the end product, it now appears Concord was completely oversold to Sony as a concept. The publisher flooding an additional $200 million in 2023 to outsource development indicates the game wasn't in a healthy state, and Sony really wanted to bring the title to market in the hopes it would turn out like the next Star Wars.

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Unfortunately, the "toxic positivity" work environment would mean any criticism against Concord would have alienated employees who wanted to voice their concerns, which creates an environment that punishes genuine hard-to-hear criticisms as employees would be considering the potential impact on their job security. This creates a strong "yes man" culture.

It shouldn't be understated - Concord is Sony's biggest budget game and it's biggest failure ever, as the publisher made exactly $0 of an alleged $400 million investment.