Concord is a cautionary tale about how quickly a live-service game with a massive budget can falter and then disappear entirely. The Sony-funded hero shooter released on August 23, 2024, and was shut down just two weeks later on September 6 due to commercial underperformance.
It's one of the most expensive failures in gaming history, and became a poster child for studios quickly shutting down dying live-service games, rather than the previous standard, which involved keeping the servers online for several years post-release.
Though everyone who purchased Concord was refunded, the game has become a talking point in game preservation circles, as this massive project suddenly disappeared and became unplayable overnight, even for players who purchased a physical copy.
Recently, Ross Scott, founder of the popular Stop Killing Games movement, appeared at the European Parliament in Brussels to speak about the importance of introducing legislation to prevent developers from making games unplayable with impunity.
Scott drew an analogy to someone who purchases a book — a publisher can't come into your home and take the book from you after you've purchased it; or an insurance policy, which has clear terms on when the policy becomes void,...
