Concord development deal reportedly rivaled The Last of Us Part 2 and Horizon Forbidden West at $200 million, which Sony has now chucked into a big ol' furnace

Concord was a huge loss in every sense

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Earlier this fall,Sony stunned everyone by taking its brand new hero shooter Concordofflineand issuing full refunds to all players.

Concord never managed to reach morethan 700 concurrent playerson Steam, so some had already declared it dead on arrival whenSonycanceled it. In any case, Sony sure seemed to be banking on a much, much bigger success. Otherwise, the publisher wouldn’t have dropped what’s now being reported as more than $200 million into Concord’s development deal.

Emphasis onover$200 million. Kotaku explainsin its reportthat Sony’s initial deal with now defunct developer Firewalk Studios wasn’t enough to cover Concord’s elongated, eight-year development period, or Concord’s IP rights. In addition, Sony purchased Firewalk in 2023 for an undisclosed amount.

This new information from Kotaku lines up with reporting from podcasterColin Moriartyfrom 2023, which claimed Sony indeed spent $200 million on the first few years Firewalk took to create Concord, as well as another $200 million on more development in 2023.

Someseriously doubtthis apparent total of $400 million in development. If it were accurate, it would rival the development costs of some of the biggest Sony games, including revered titles like The Last of Us Part 2, Horizon Forbidden West, and Final Fantasy 7 Remake. To really drive home how colossal a failure a $400 million loss would be for Sony, that number is $300 million more than what it took to make Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart and almost $100 million more expensive than Marvel’s Spider-Man 2.

Perhaps the most disappointing thing is that, for most players, there just wasn’t enough evidence of the time and money Firewalk put into Concord, which by most accounts felt like an underwhelming and cumbersome FPS. We said the same in ourConcord review.

Concord is officially, fully, “permanently” dead as Sony announces it’s closing the failed hero shooter’s studio and moving on: “We will take the lessons learned.”

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Ashley Bardhan is a critic from New York who covers gaming, culture, and other things people like. She previously wrote Inverse’s award-winning Inverse Daily newsletter. Then, as a Kotaku staff writer and Destructoid columnist, she covered horror and women in video games. Her arts writing has appeared in a myriad of other publications, including Pitchfork, Gawker, and Vulture.

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