Key Takeaways
- Ryan Ellis steps down from the director role for Concord, impacting Firewalk Studios.
- Concord was officially shut down after poor sales, leading to refunds.
- The game’s future remains unclear.
Concord’s director Ryan Ellis has recently told the staff at Firewalk Studios that he would step down into a support role at the company, according to reports. Concord has been a big disappointment for Sony and Firewalk Studios, and it seems that its failure has impacted the company’s upper management.
Concord was officially shut down earlier this month, only two weeks after its launch on PS5 and PC. At the time, Ellis announced that copies of Concord would no longer be sold, and recognized that the game did not sell as intended. The multiplayer shooter was rumored to have sold only around 25,000 copies across both platforms, and it was clear from the start that the launch didn’t land well with players. Now, it seems that the game’s tragic shutdown may have also affected the internal structure of the developer Firewalk Studios.
According to a recent report made by Kotaku, Ryan Ellis has revealed to people at Firewalk Studios that he was stepping down from his position as Concord’s director to take a support role in the company. The media outlet interviewed three undisclosed sources from the studio, who revealed that “Ryan deeply believed in that project and bringing players together through the joy in it.” However, the director was visibly disheartened when it became clear that Concord would be a failure due to a lack of player adoption. At the moment, it’s still unclear what exactly will be Ellis’ next role at Firewalk Studios or even what will be the studio’s next project.
Concord’s Director Ryan Ellis to Step Down Into a Support Role
While Concord did get somewhat positive reviews from a few critics, its overall reception was lukewarm, which did not seem to help with sales. Due to this commercial failure, it seems unlikely that Concord will be able to make a comeback, especially considering that Firewalk Studios has already issued refunds for anyone who purchased the multiplayer title.
Ryan deeply believed in that project and bringing players together through the joy in it.
Situations such as Concord’s shutdown are very sad news in the game industry. However, the game’s end led to a pretty odd situation. Recent reports indicate that despite the shooter being officially dead, one gamer is still playing Concord on Steam, where the title previously peaked at 697 concurrent players. While the person who is still “playing” Concord is unknown, the gamer likely decided not to close the title as a way to protest against its shutdown. Due to the servers being offline, it’s still impossible to play Concord in any way.
