Concord has been struggling to make even the tiniest splash in the modern gaming scene in 2024, and its open beta weekend has only turned things from bad to worse. Over four days, barely anyone logged in to play.
When we say barely anyone too, it’s no hyperbole—at times, the Concord beta had as few as three to four hundred people online, with high watermarks coming closer to 2,000 concurrent gamers. According to SteamDB.info metrics, the five-vs-five hero shooter peaked at 1,117 players in its beta’s closing 24 hours.
This doesn’t take the PlayStation 5 playerbase into account, of course, and developers Firewalk Studios did make sure both enjoyed a similar testing period. Sony doesn’t share community counts for its console-released games though, and considering the hero shooter does have crossplay and many servers were already quite barren for PC and PlayStation players alike, things likely weren’t much better there.
It’s a very, very worrying blow for the in-house PlayStation game—the first since Killzone: Shadow Fall in 2013—with many players already declaring it “dead on arrival” as early as day one of this weekend’s testing run.
Various barriers scared interested players away early, with some complaining about oversaturation in the hero shooter market alongside Overwatch 2, VALORANT, and fellow newcomer Marvel Rivals. Others thought it lacked any real originality and many were quickly annoyed by the $40 price tag.
There were some who instantly loved it; they suggested they’d still preorder a copy despite the abysmal beta numbers. The things that got the most praise from that slice of the fandom included gameplay speed and “cool” characters.
Whether you’re excited or want to give Concord another go when it launches, Firewalk’s hero shooter will hit digital shelves on Aug. 23—if it’s not delayed.
