Key Takeaways
- Borderlands 4’s narrative director Sam Winkler is advising the Concord team to back up their work while they can.
- In a Twitter post, Winkler mentioned almost losing all of his work on the ill-fated Battleborn when it was shut down.
- Concord sales have been suspended and the game will be taken offline on September 6, just two weeks after its initial launch.
An employee working on Gearbox’s upcoming game Borderlands 4 shared some sage advice for Concord developers, urging the team to back up their work before it’s too late. This advice comes as Sony confirmed it would be pulling the plug on Concord two weeks after the game’s release due to lukewarm reception and shockingly low sales, leading to one of the biggest fumbles the video game industry has seen in recent memory.
Despite the sudden news regarding Concord‘s death, the game’s story is quite a lengthy one, with the FPS reportedly being developed for eight years. Concord was poised to be Sony’s foray into the crowded hero-shooter genre, featuring a wide cast of characters, a colorful art style, and dozens of tide-turning abilities. However, Concord quickly faced trouble, with the game launching to dismal sales and incredibly low player counts. Concord failed to gain momentum in the leadup to its release, though the game’s actual launch was unexpectedly catastrophic, with Sony confirming it would be delisting the game less than two weeks later. With the news of Concord‘s demise going public, a team lead working on the next Borderlands game has shared some useful advice.
The failure of Concord prompted Borderlands 4‘s narrative director, Sam Winkler, to offer some advice they learned the hard way back when Gearbox’s Battleborn was shut down. “Anyone who worked on Concord (or any live service game) – get your work captured ASAP,” Winkler said in a Tweet. “For a long time, I didn’t have capture of my work on Battleborn – my first shipped content ever! – and I regretted not getting it while I could. Only got it eventually thanks to a fan mod.” Similar to Concord, Battleborn was practically dead on arrival, launching with middling reviews and a low player base. Both games attempted to carve out their own pockets of the crowded hero-shooter genre and failed to do so, though Concord‘s demise came much quicker.
Borderlands Developer Shares Advice for Concord Team
Battleborn sought to mix the silliness of the Borderlands franchise with a blend of hero-shooter and MOBA elements. The game faced many issues at launch, but its biggest hardship came with its close release to Blizzard’s now-iconic Overwatch, which was also a bright and colorful hero-shooter. Battleborn was released in 2016 and delisted in 2019, with the game’s online functionality ending permanently in 2021. The Concord team only has until September 6 to save any data from the game.
It’s anyone’s guess as to what’s next for Sony’s hero-shooter, though there are rumblings that Concord will turn free-to-play eventually. The few players still left are getting some enjoyment out of Concord in the lead-up to the game’s shutdown. However, the hero-shooter/MOBA genre is set to become more crowded soon, with Valve gearing up to enter the scene with Deadlock, a brand-new IP from the legendary video game studio. Deadlock likely caused trouble for Concord as well, though Valve’s new game is currently only playable as a beta.
