Sony Live Service shooter Concord makes its debut with a tragic 697 concurrent players on Steam

Sony's live service shooter Concord, available for PlayStation 5 and PC, made its debut on Steam with a whopping 697 concurrent players.

Data from player tracking website SteamDB shows that Concord, which released on August 20, 2024 with the $59.99 Digital Deluxe Edition and August 23 with the $39.99 Standard Edition, had a peak player count of 697 on August 23.

Helldivers 2, another live service game from Sony that launched in February 2024, reached a peak concurrent player count of 155,926 in its opening weekend, The Finals reached 242,619, and even Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League, which Warner Bros. Discovery boss David Zaslav called a disappointment and caused a $200 million revenue hit, debuted with 12,786 peak concurrent players on Steam. Concord's player count is just 5% of that number.

Live service games tend to be most successful at launch and see player attrition after a few weeks or months, so such a poor start does not bode well for Concord's future.

By Saturday, August 24, the number had already dropped to 473 concurrent players, even though games usually see a surge in their first weekend of sales. Then by Sunday, the number dropped to 402 players, and there are currently only 131 players online on Steam.

This came after eight years of development and presumably tens, if not hundreds, of millions of dollars spent by Sony, a company already turning away from a heavy live service future. Sony president Hiroki Totoki has committed to releasing only six of 12 live service games in development, and one based on The Last of Us has already been canceled.

Ryan Dinsdale is a freelance reporter at IGN. He talks about The Witcher all day.