Lower than two months after Sony took its stay service hero-shooter Concord offline after a disastrous launch, the corporate introduced Tuesday it was shutting down developer Firewalk Studios and shutting the ebook on the notorious sport. Firewalk staff will depart Sony Interactive Leisure (SIE) and the PlayStation father or mother will “completely sundown” the sport, admitting that it didn’t hit its targets with the multiplayer title. Along with shuttering the Harmony developer, Sony stated it was additionally closing cell video games developer Neon Koi.

Firewalk Studios Closed

Firewalk’s closure marks the top of an ignominious chapter for Sony, that noticed the corporate launch Harmony on August 23 to the sound of crickets. The $40 hero-shooter failed to search out an viewers in a aggressive style filled with free-to-play choices, peaking out at a dismal 697 concurrent gamers on Steam earlier than it was scrubbed from PlayStation and PC storefronts and taken offline lower than two weeks after launch.

“We now have spent appreciable time these previous few months exploring all our choices,” Hermen Hulst, CEO of Studio Enterprise Group at SIE, stated in an internal email to staff. “After a lot thought, now we have decided one of the best path ahead is to completely sundown the sport and shut the studio.”

Hulst stated sure points of Harmony didn’t attraction to sufficient gamers, regardless of a few of its “distinctive” qualities. “The PvP first individual shooter style is a aggressive house that is constantly evolving, and sadly, we didn’t hit our targets with this title. We’ll take the teachings realized from Harmony and proceed to advance our stay service capabilities to ship future progress on this space.”

In an X (previously Twitter) submit Tuesday, Firewalk Studios signed off one final time, hailing its improvement workforce as “actually world-class”.

“We took some dangers alongside the best way – marrying points of card battlers and combating video games with first-person-shooters – and though a few of these and different points of the IP did not land as we hoped, the thought of placing new issues into the world is crucial to pushing the medium ahead,” the studio stated within the submit.

Sony stated the choice to close each Firewalk and Neon Koi was given severe thought and was in the end the suitable one to “strengthen the group”. The corporate additionally stated it could work to position laid off staff from each builders inside its international portfolio of sport studios the place doable.

Harmony Failure

Firewalk Studios was fashioned in 2018 as part of ProbablyMonsters, headed by Bungie veterans. Sony acquired the developer in April 2023 and reportedly pumped over $200 million into its first sport, Harmony. Trade insiders have claimed that the shooter, which Sony acquired as a part of its live-service push, value a reported $400 million to make and consequently represents Sony’s largest loss ever on a sport.

A retro-futuristic sci-fi hero-shooter with an art-style and witty banter that resembled Guardians of the Galaxy, Harmony launched on August 23 at a $40 price ticket. The sport was virtually useless on arrival, with an estimated 10,000 copies bought on Steam and round 15,000 on PlayStation Store.

Double-digit concurrent participant counts led to Sony taking the sport offline on September 6 and issuing refunds to all gamers who had bought the sport. On the time, the corporate stated it could “discover choices,” which led some to imagine that Harmony may return in a unique kind, maybe as a free-to-play title or on Sony’s sport subscription service, PlayStation Plus.

In our review of Harmony, we stated the sport was a “serviceable first-person hero-shooter, very a lot within the vein of Overwatch” that failed to differentiate itself in a crowded subject in significant methods.