Go woke, go broke: Sony pulls multiplayer video game Concord, offers full refund to players

by WorldTribune Staff, September 8, 2024 Contract With Our Readers

The multiplayer shooter Concord, which featured a trans character and included preferred pronouns on others, has been shut down less than two weeks after release.

The game, which reportedly took eight years to complete and cost Sony as much as $200 million, is offering full refunds to all players who purchased it for PS5 or PC.

The profiles of playable characters in Concord includes their preferred pronouns.

That Park Place reports that Firewalk Studios Game Director Ryan Ellis revealed the decision to take Concord offline in a blog post on Sept. 3.

Ellis stated: “At this time, we have decided to take the game offline beginning September 6, 2024, and explore options, including those that will better reach our players.”

He also announced that the company would cease sales of the game immediately and begin offering full refunds to all gamers who purchased Concord for PlayStation 5 or PC.

“Concord, a multiplayer game in the same vein as Overwatch, faced criticism and negative feedback from the moment it was announced. Many players expressed displeasure with the game’s design choices and the inclusion of pronouns for characters, which some viewed as the promotion of transgender ideology. Despite these concerns, Firewalk Studios chose to ignore the feedback, with Director of IP Kim Kreines stating in an interview with VGC that the trailer was just a ‘tiny slice’ of the game and that players would eventually fall in love with the depth of the characters and their unfolding personalities and backstories,” Lucas Nolan wrote for Breitbart.

Upon its official release on Aug. 23, Concord’s peak concurrent player count on Steam was 697 and soon plummeted to only 110. The game fared no better on PlayStation, with PSNProfiles reporting that out of the 1,303 individuals who owned the game, only 1,264 had achieved the most common trophy, “First Takedown,” which requires players to get their first elimination or kill.

The Federalist’s Douglas Blair noted that “Following closely behind ‘Concord’ on the woke train to failure is ‘Dustborn.’ “

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Forbes described it as “among the most unrepentantly liberal and left-leaning games out there.” Interviews with the game’s creator and developers only served to reinforce that description.

The team told gaming outlet PSU in an interview that “the idea behind Dustborn’s setting and characters was also influenced by a series of political events that deeply affected us all, beginning in the summer of 2016, and continuing until … well, today.”

That political messaging is clear from the opening seconds of “Dustborn’s” gameplay, major chunks of which have received deep scorn on social media. The game begins with a musical number where our heroic protagonists, all of which have some form of DEI cred, sing about how native citizens “won’t last” and will “be replaced” by refugees.

Blair added: “Other woke nuggets include the ability to cancel and bully opponents, get triggered, and call people racists.”

“Dustborn” had had an all-time peak of just 83 players, while current player totals hover around the mid-20s.

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