Will Concord ever come back? Nearly 2,000 people have signed a petition willing the game to, but even the experts reckon it's in an "unprecedented situation"
Hey, there's a chance not all of these people who've signed this thing are joking, right? Er, maybe.
What were you up to on Friday night? Well, Concord players were busy watching it go offline for the time being following an error message which signaled the race to grab its platinum trophy was up.
Since we learned that the game would be disappearing into the ether, there's been a lot of chatter about whether Concord will actually return in the future, with one industry analyst having called the game's current state of play an "unprecedented situation".
Back when the news of Concord's impending shutdown arrived, Circana executive director Mat Piscatella said he thinks what's happening to the Sony shooter is pretty unique. "What's happening with Concord is unprecedented," he wrote on Bluesky (thanks, IGN). "I'm seeing folks pointing to Anthem as a comp, and... no. Anthem was the best-selling game of its February 2019 launch month, and was the 15th best-selling game of that year, and can still be played today."
On the subject of its potential return, he added: "On the one hand, the game and the IP were just so soundly rejected of it that one may think it unsalvageable. On the other hand, so few know about the game that perhaps it could be brought back with a different model and a significant refresh. I think this is an unprecedented situation, with all options on the table, so anyone's guess is probably as good as mine."
Naturally, one of the options that's been tabled in a lot of places is a returning Concord being free-to-play, with the idea being that by removing the traditional buy-in requirement, a revamped version of the game might be able to better the low player counts it suffered from following its initial release. Though there's obviously a debate to be had as to whether that step would solve all of — or enough of — the game's issues to fuel the kind of resurgence PlayStation would be looking for.
What's happening with Concord is unprecedented. I'm seeing folks pointing to Anthem as a comp, and... no. Anthem was the best-selling game of its Feb 2019 launch month, and was the 15th best-selling game of that year, and can still be played today.
— Mat Piscatella (@matpiscatella.bsky.social) Sep 3, 2024 at 7:01 PM
As we wrote in our review of Concord: "There’s a good game under all the rubble and perplexing business decisions (such as not giving it out in PS Plus Extra), but why should you put up with all these frustrations when the game doesn’t a have distinct identity and there are better alternatives available for free right now?"
Amid all of this chatter, the game has managed to gain a fair amount of attention as a meme, or rather a thing that people on the internet have lined up to gossip about due to its bizarre circumstances. A symptom of this was a Morbius-inspired Change.org petition dubbed "We Were All Busy That Week - Please Release Concord Again".
While it is clearly a joke, it's also managed to go from a paltry 25 signatures when we initially covered it last week, to just short of 2,000 as of writing - 1,934 to be exact. Who knows whether any of those people actually care about playing Concord, but the petition's certainly gained more traction in just five days that I thought it would.
Would you - either genuinely or sarcastically - like to see Concord come back in some form? Let us know below!