Business Sony is shutting down Firewalk Studios, the maker of the recent shooter Concord

*Below is an internal email from Hermen Hulst, CEO, Studio Business Group, Sony Interactive Entertainment distributed today to SIE employees.

**********************************************************************************

Dear Team,

Today, I want to share some important updates from Sony Interactive Entertainment’s Studio Business Group.

We consistently evaluate our games portfolio and status of our projects to ensure we are meeting near and long-term business priorities. As part of our ongoing efforts to strengthen SIE’s Studio Business, we have had to make a difficult decision relating to two of our studios – Neon Koi and Firewalk Studios.

Expanding beyond PlayStation devices and crafting engaging online experiences alongside our single-player games are key focal areas for us as we evolve our revenue streams. We need to be strategic, though, in bringing our games to new platforms and recognize when our games fall short of meeting player expectations.

While mobile remains a priority growth area for the Studio Business, we are in the very early stage of our mobile efforts. To achieve success in this area we need to concentrate on titles that are in-line with PlayStation Studios’ pedigree and have the potential to reach more players globally.

With this re-focused approach, Neon Koi will close, and its mobile action game will not be moving forward. I want to express my gratitude to everyone at Neon Koi for their hard work and endless passion to innovate.

Regarding Firewalk, as announced in early September (An Important Update on Concord), certain aspects of Concord were exceptional, but others did not land with enough players, and as a result we took the game offline. We have spent considerable time these past few months exploring all our options.

After much thought, we have determined the best path forward is to permanently sunset the game and close the studio.   I want to thank all of Firewalk for their craftsmanship, creative spirit and dedication.

The PvP first person shooter genre is a competitive space that’s continuously evolving, and unfortunately, we did not hit our targets with this title. We will take the lessons learned from Concord and continue to advance our live service capabilities to deliver future growth in this area.

I know none of this is easy news to hear, particularly with colleagues and friends departing SIE. Both decisions were given serious thought, and ultimately, we feel they are the right ones to strengthen the organization. Neon Koi and Firewalk were home to many talented individuals, and we will work to find placement for some of those impacted within our global community of studios where possible.

I am a big believer in the benefits of embracing creative experimentation and developing new IP. However, growing through sustainable financials, especially in a challenged economic environment is critical.

While today is a difficult day, there is much to look forward to in the months ahead from the Studio Business Group and our teams. I remain confident that we are building a resilient and capable organization driven by creating unforgettable entertainment experiences for our players.  

Thank you for your continued support.

https://sonyinteractive.com/en/news/blog/an-update-from-playstation-studios/ (Archive)

 

[cybertoaster]

You will never be a real game developer. You have no talent, you have no knowledge, you have no drive. You are a failed hipster twisted by social media and DEI into a crude mockery of gaming’s perfection.

All the “validation” you get is two-faced and half-hearted. Behind your back people mock you. Your parents are disgusted and ashamed of you, your “friends” laugh at your shitty games behind closed doors.

Gamers are utterly repulsed by you. Years of console wars have allowed gamers to sniff out frauds with incredible efficiency. Even those who “pass” look uncanny and unnatural to a gamer. Your game structure is a dead giveaway. And even if you manage to get a soyboy to buy your game he’ll turn tail and refund the second he plays your boring, crappy walk simulator full of trans black women.

You will never be Carmack. You wrench out a fake smile every single morning and tell yourself it’s going to be ok, but deep inside you feel the depression creeping up like a weed, ready to crush you under the unbearable weight.

Eventually it’ll be too much to bear - you’ll buy a rope, tie a noose, put it around your neck, and plunge into the cold abyss. Your wife's son will find you, not heartbroken but relieved that he no longer has to live with the unbearable shame and disappointment. They’ll bury you with a headstone marked with your real job, and every passerby for the rest of eternity will know a burger flipper is buried there. Your body will decay and go back to the dust, and all that will remain of your legacy is a landfill full of unsold games.

This is your fate. This is what you chose. There is no turning back.

 

[Falcos_Commisar]

C'mon, Sony, give Concord a second chance. We were all busy that week.

Just like how they gave Morbius a second chance

 

[WonderWino]

Learn to weld cocksuckers!

NO REFUNDS*

*Except for Concord buyers.

Fuck that....do you really want these people being responsible for the welding on bridges you end up driving on?

Hell no

Put them in some run down shack in the ass end of arctic canada and make them herd cats for a living, with nothing to eat except trump brand steaks and diet coke and nothing to watch except reruns of the apprentice

 

[PhoBingas]

Firewalk Studios? More like Firedwalk Studios. Get purged.

I'd have also accepted Sidewalk Studios, as the lot of the dangerhairs and fags will probably be panhandling once they're shitcanned.

 

[Daddy's Little Kitten]

How could this happen?

 

[AssignedEva]

Can you imagine being a 60-something Japanese executive, reviewing quarterly returns, seeing the cost of this product, seeing its sales, and then how many copies it actually sold? Then you go and see what the product actually is?

I'm guessing that happened at about 9 AM Tokyo time on October 29th.

Wouldn't be the first time they saw the content. This game started development right at the start of TDS (and just after Overwatch released) and from what I can understand, the goal of the company was veteran game developers trying to create brand new IPs that "told a different story". When Sony started working with them, the Japanese executives would not have looked at this:

and thought "what a great person for a video game character to be based on". What they'll have heard and been pitched is that diverse storytelling is what American consumers are clamouring for - a black trans woman is the exact sort of protagonist that our regular fans will love, but who will also attract a much larger audience who don't normally play these sort of games - just look at how much noise BLM is making! Overwatch was successful and got praised for having racially diverse and LGBT characters... so if we make an even more diverse and inclusive game, it'll disrupt the American video game market! And even if there's only middling sales, there'll still be a bunch of positive PR and kudos for us for featuring the first black trans woman character in an AAA game.

Or in other words "this is some weird gaijin shit, but the gaijin are apparently clamouring for it, so let's make loads of money". Their downfall was all the Japanese oversight were baffled by it and assumed the American studio knew what they were doing, and the American studio were all true believers. I also think they probably missed their window - if they'd been able to get this out a few years earlier it might have been less of an embarrassing failure before fatigue about this sort of thing set in (especially coming out just after The Acolyte and all the "THIS ISN'T FOR YOU" thinkpieces it birthed).

 

[Agent Abe Caprine]

Useless game dev niggers float from project to project, hoping to scrape a living wage for 2-4 years at a time until game is done and they get laid off or referred by a friend to a studio with some security, like EgAy or Bioshit. They hope someday to contribute to a hit that makes them a 2000's Blizzard or Riot. They settle for milking five to seven years off absolute black holes like Anthem, Suicide Squad or Concord.

Meanwhile, a lone chad like Concerned Ape makes millions in his basement and answers to no one, but that would require talent + project management skills.

Said chad also puts a thinly veiled self insert in his game that becomes the most popular bachalor. For some reason, everyone wants to bang the stoner basement goblin.

 

[Safir]

Not the best example, he's won the lottery in a way, I seen better indies going nowhere because their games never go viral like that.

Factory Town
Baba is You
Void Stranger
Coffin of Andy & Leyley
Vampire Survivor
"Name seven more, name ten more," I could go all night.

game: steam reviews
Factory Town: 4k
Baba is You: 18k
Void Stranger: 1.6k
Coffin of Andy & Leyley: 22k
Vampire Survivors: 224k, ok that's a hit all right
Stardew Valley: 657k.
(plus, the more popular the game is, the more likely it is to be on other stores and devices)

Void Stranger, at 1600 positive reviews and $11.99 full price (assuming sales and 5% leaving a review) is just a job -- certainly better than sucking ladydique at Google, but pays about the same.
(This game stood out because I have it on my wishlist and this is the first time I've heard about it anywhere else.)

Baba Is You has 18k and is made by one person. Noita had 3 devs including Baba's, 60k, very good.

Many other simple-looking indies have lots more people involved.
The visual novel Slay The Princess (15k reviews), one of the recent-ish "viral sensations" (it's trash, I hope whoever recommended it on here gets genital warts), has an absolutely massive list of people in the credits (not counting patreon paypigs).

More, for scale:
Amogus: 608k
Risk of Rain 2: 296k
Kenshi: 75k
Hollow Knight: 333k
Fear and Hunger: 12k

There's no success story comparable to Stardew Valley.

Also, people do win the lottery a lot. lenta.ru, the Russian libshit news site, runs a different "man bought chewing gum and got rich" story a few times per week (it's always about a lottery ticket). Bing'ing "and got rich (in the male gender)", I get stories from
(all 2024)
Oct 8
Oct 18
Oct 27
Oct 15
Oct 3
Oct 11
Oct 26
There are of course women winning, too, and men winning with a different clickbait headline.

 

[Bland Crumbs]

Yeah, but you got to admit this controller looks really dope.
Ver archivo adjunto 6575397

It looks like something from The Last Starfighter which makes me even more annoyed.

Just like how they gave Morbius a second chance

It's 'Cordin' time!
I'm about to COOOOOOORD!!!

We can do it. We have the technology and I am willing to bet Sony will fall for it again.

 

[Pokemon Conquistador]

$400 million well spent, Sony!

Divided among 250 players is $1,600, 000 per player! Other than being a makework job for queerfag programmers and social engineers, what good did this accomplish?

 

[glass_houses]

Divided among 250 players is $1,600, 000 per player! Other than being a makework job for queerfag programmers and social engineers, what good did this accomplish?

I'm hoping that it furthers the "get woke, go broke" meme. There are certainly some popular franchises with woke elements, but usually these start as mainstream properties and only later acquire the woke elements "after popular demand" and the majority of the audience are people who were already invested in the property and don't want to move on. A game that's woke from the ground up is the absolute best illustration of just how unpopular full SJ is with players who had a bad day and just want to escape from the world for a few hours. Hopefully this is something that developers and financiers sit up and take notice of.

 

[HOMO FOR LIFE RETURNS]

$400 million well spent, Sony!

You know....if you fuck up $400 million....usually you go out of business....

 

[glass_houses]

You know....if you fuck up $400 million....usually you go out of business....

Not if you're one of BlackRock's little social engineering projects. The amount of money they're willing to burn for little to no gain is incomprehensible to mortals like us.

 

[Mac Monster]

Another failed DEI shitshow to add to the pile. Sadly, I don't think the failure of Concord is going to convince the retarded higher-ups at Sony to abandon all of their faggotry regardless of how repulsive it is to normal people.

 

[BoobWhiskers]

There's no success story comparable to Stardew Valley.

They're not comparable to Stardew Valley, but in terms of one-man indie successes, wouldn't Undertale and Five Nights at Freddy's also count? Ymmv on whether they count as GOOD, but they've definitely had major cultural impact, big fan followings even among people who aren't normally indie game players, and I know that FNAF has gone on to other forms of media.

(If any of this is wildly inaccurate please disregard, I know nothing about these games beyond never being able to fucking escape well-drawn fanart that made me mad that Undertale looked like dogshit).

 

[Tanner Glass]

Neon Koi and Firewalk were home to many talented individuals, and we will work to find placement for some of those impacted within our global community of studios where possible.

The only placement for ex-Firewalk devs should be "escorted from the building" and/or "promoted to customer".

Not a single talented person worked at Firewalk except for the executives who got Sony to invest so much money into an absolute shitpile.

 

[Agent Abe Caprine]

They're not comparable to Stardew Valley, but in terms of one-man indie successes, wouldn't Undertale and Five Nights at Freddy's also count? Ymmv on whether they count as GOOD, but they've definitely had major cultural impact, big fan followings even among people who aren't normally indie game players, and I know that FNAF has gone on to other forms of media.

(If any of this is wildly inaccurate please disregard, I know nothing about these games beyond never being able to fucking escape well-drawn fanart that made me mad that Undertale looked like dogshit).

Undertale is good as a game. Nothing mindblowing, but it's a fun time if you enjoy quirky indie RPGs. As a fanbase, not so much. The fanbase is mindblowing for all the wrong reasons.

FNAF is not my thing, but it seems to have a story that was written by an okay writer. Fanbase is also mindblowing for all the wrong reasons.

 

[Would]

Fuck that....do you really want these people being responsible for the welding on bridges you end up driving on?

These people will sooner suck cock behind a starbucks than work a blue collar physical job.
They would rather die than work a chud job that teaches practicality. We're safe from them.
It's the illegal beaners who think they can weld because they made a shitty bridge for their mud village back home that they're more than capable of making and sustaining American infrastructure.

 

[TowinKarz]

Yeah, but you got to admit this controller looks really dope.
Ver archivo adjunto 6575397

For 1989....... at least.

 

[Whoopsie Daisy]

Sonyfags have been going out of their way to remind people that this game wasn't woke and didn't fail because it was woke. It failed because the market is saturated for hero shooters. Fairgame will be a total success though.