Sony Killed This Game in 2024. Three Developers Reverse-Engineered It Back to Life (aftermath.site) 19
An anonymous reader shared this post from the gaming news site Aftermath:
Concord, Sony Interactive Entertainment and Firewalk Studios' Overwatch-like shooter, was live for just two weeks before it was pulled offline. Though Concord certainly had some dedicated players, it didn't have many — which is why it may be surprising to hear that a group of players are reverse-engineering the game and its servers to bring it back to life.
Publisher Sony removed Concord from stores and digital marketplaces, automatically refunded some, and, later, shut down Firewalk Studios. Two hundred or so people were laid off, and any hopes of Concord's return were dashed. Poor sales — estimated to be under 25,000 copies sold — and low player numbers marred the release. Firewalk Studios' game director Ryan Ellis said in a blog post that pieces of the game "resonated with players," but "other aspects of the game and [Concord's] initial launch didn't land the way [Firewalk Studios] intended."
Concord wasn't a bad game, but it just didn't generate enough interest with enough players. Now, a group of three hobbyist reverse-engineers, who go by real, Red, and gwog online, are trying to make it playable again... "Sometimes there's enough of the server left in the game, that we can 'activate' that code and make the game believe it's a server," Red said. "We do pretty much always need to fill in the gaps though..." Concord used an anti-tamper software to keep people from cheating, which also creates a problem for people reverse engineering. It's "nearly impossible" to crack, Red said, so the group didn't — they found an exploit to "forcefully decrypt the game's code" to "restore the game and start working on servers...."
It's not open to the public, but people can sign up for future tests. Even former Firewalk Studios employees have joined the server. They're excited to see Concord come back to life, too, the developers said.
"Friday morning, a video of the playtest was posted to the Concord Reddit page," according to the article. (Though ironically by Friday night YouTube had had removed the video "due to a copyright claim by MarkScan Enforcement."
Publisher Sony removed Concord from stores and digital marketplaces, automatically refunded some, and, later, shut down Firewalk Studios. Two hundred or so people were laid off, and any hopes of Concord's return were dashed. Poor sales — estimated to be under 25,000 copies sold — and low player numbers marred the release. Firewalk Studios' game director Ryan Ellis said in a blog post that pieces of the game "resonated with players," but "other aspects of the game and [Concord's] initial launch didn't land the way [Firewalk Studios] intended."
Concord wasn't a bad game, but it just didn't generate enough interest with enough players. Now, a group of three hobbyist reverse-engineers, who go by real, Red, and gwog online, are trying to make it playable again... "Sometimes there's enough of the server left in the game, that we can 'activate' that code and make the game believe it's a server," Red said. "We do pretty much always need to fill in the gaps though..." Concord used an anti-tamper software to keep people from cheating, which also creates a problem for people reverse engineering. It's "nearly impossible" to crack, Red said, so the group didn't — they found an exploit to "forcefully decrypt the game's code" to "restore the game and start working on servers...."
It's not open to the public, but people can sign up for future tests. Even former Firewalk Studios employees have joined the server. They're excited to see Concord come back to life, too, the developers said.
"Friday morning, a video of the playtest was posted to the Concord Reddit page," according to the article. (Though ironically by Friday night YouTube had had removed the video "due to a copyright claim by MarkScan Enforcement."
Please do not feed ... (Score:3)
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That's the beauty of software, it doesn't have to be of value to anyone but those who put effort in it.
Not a bad game, no... (Score:5, Insightful)
It was worse. It was a mediocre game that was *really* ugly and was going up against entrenched competition that outclassed it six ways from Sunday.
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
You would think the CEO responsible for that disaster would be drummed out of the industry and never work again but I don't even think they bothered to fire him from Sony. I think it's pretty obvious that the fucker was trying to throw money to create a big franchise so that he could move up in the company. It must be nice to waste hundreds of millions of dollars through mismanagement to advance your career an
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Ugly is in the eye of the beholder. It wasn't ugly IMO, but what it was ... is ... well the other games. Not only was it going against entrenched competition, it brought literally *nothing new* to the landscape. It's unfair to say the competition outclassed them in any way other than being established. These games are all samey, but the problem is you can't convince people to switch from their established live service title to another one without offering them something for the effort.
Concord was a fine gam
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"Ugly is in the eye of the beholder."
Well, a lot of beholders found it ugly. When one of the most common types of reaction videos is "Here's how I would fix the unappealing character designs and color palettes," you've got a problem. Didn't help that it cost money when the competition was FTP.
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Countless popular titles have had that criticism. But I caution you against just looking at videos and comments. We're in the world of bandwagons. When it's cool enough to hate something to make a reaction video about it, then everyone makes the same reaction video. Welcome to algorithmic content creation.
Subversive long tail marketing? (Score:2)
Maybe canceling the game and then having some Intrepid Mega fans reverse engineer to get it up and running again will create the cultural traction that they were actually going for to draw in a player base? Don't forget if you give Bob Dobbs $5 you get to go to paradise, or three times your money back.
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An extremely BAD product (Score:3)
How can this post claim it was not a bad game - it single-handedly sank a budget of a small nation state into something that looked significantly worse than most fan-made homages to actually good games, and it sank an entire studio. And it barely took two weeks from launch to do all that.
It really hardly ever gets much worse than this.
I feel bad for these reverse engineers, if the code and architecture are anything like the graphics and design, it must be an extremely painful process to wade thru these horrors.
Just let it stay dead, nobody wants this abomination. You all got your money back anyway.
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Re: An extremely BAD product (Score:2)
Real number is at least $400 mioâ¦..
The only reason (Score:3)
The only reason I see it's legitimate to revive this Chernobyl-level disaster of a game is... historical reasons.
Sure there are plenty of videos showing how the game was, but there's this thing with videogames, no video can replace hands-on gaming.
And this game is such an infamous chapter of videogame history I think it's a good thing someone keep it somehow playable.
OTOH, RIP The Crew, a good game that hadn't such fortune.
Should be a crime (Score:2)
Should be a crime to bring that game back to life.
The article talks about all the reasons that the game failed, but doesn't once mention how gamers were laughing at it and calling it a joke before it was even released. After its release, they doubled down. It says that Sony didn't market it enough to make people aware of it, and yet I don't know anyone who hasn't heard of it. Delusions and cope for sure.
Sometimes dead is better (Score:2)