After merely two weeks on the market, Sony shut down Concord and of that drip-fed info come forward, we now know this game might have cost $400 million to make. It also had a toxic positivity problem.
A nameless staffer who worked on Concord spoke with Sacred Symbols host, Colin Moriarty, about the game’s downfall. This staffer noted the game’s lavish budget and the culture surrounding the game and studio. Overall, blame was placed on a “toxic positivity” mindset where you just couldn’t bad mouth the game even if it was the “right” thing to do because of “Bungie Magic,” as a good portion of the studio was made up of past Bungie devs.
In 2023, the game went into alpha where it was described as being in a “laughable state,” at that time, the game was already $200 million down the drain, meaning another $200 million was tossed throughout the year. Bearing in mind, the game was teased that same year that it entered alpha with a release year attached.
This “toxic positivity” mindset wasn’t just an alleged thing from one employee, either, as it’s also been backed by Kotaku’s Ethan Gach on Twitter. Moriarty does assert if this is true, Concord was Sony’s biggest game budget-wise and thus is a rather massive failure, as the game not only shut down its servers not long after launch, but all players were refunded.
Hopefully, this comes as a cautionary tale for studios looking to chase the latest trends in gaming and makes studios realize trend-chasing almost never ends well.