Concord Early Access Beta is a Bomb

Video Games

The main attraction at this year’s PlayStation State of Play was Concord, a sci-fi first-person shooter developed by Firewalk Studios (which is owned by Sony, hence the focus at State of Play). It was pretty underwhelming, a goofy-looking game with some nice visuals but little to draw anyone in. Since then, stories have come out about the lead character designer whining about “white privilege” – which many assume is the reason why there are no white male characters in the game – and having every character display their pronouns. This past weekend, July 12-14, was the game’s early access beta period, and the results do not spell success for Concord. According to That Park Place, the game’s concurrent player number peaked at 1,124 on July 12, then went downhill; 24 hours later, it was at 671 concurrent players, and on July 14, it peaked at 479 concurrent players.

Moreover, gamers who played it don’t seem all that impressed, with it receiving faint praise at most:

So I tried the CONCORD beta to see if it could win me over here’s the positives & negatives imo

Positives
– it was a free beta
– Graphically it looks nice in cutscenes

Negatives
– Character movement feels sloppy & slow
– Maps feel lifeless & boring
– No character felt “good”… pic.twitter.com/gh3CAzewQX

— Endymion (@EndymionYT) July 13, 2024

The good news for Concord is that the open beta began today, July 18, and its peak is 2,363 concurrent players so far, which is better than the early access, which makes sense, as more people have access to it now. The bad news is that it’s at 893 on SteamDB’s most wishlisted games list, indicating that not many people are interested in it. (It’s up from 946 after the early access beta, so I guess that’s something.) And it’s impossible not to wonder if it’s the woke stuff, at least in part. I don’t much care about this, especially the game not having white men; it’s an original game, so they can do what they want. But when gamers see “pronouns in bio” in a video game, they roll their eyes. People are tired of this stuff, and while I don’t think anyone would have cared about the lack of white men in itself, the designer talking about how white people have to be actively working towards diversity or they’re racists made it seem like an identity politics lecture, which nobody wants in a first-person shooter. If Concord were a good game, it could have weathered that, but it sounds like it’s nothing special. This looks to be another dud of a game.