Lower than two months after Sony took its reside service hero-shooter Harmony offline after a disastrous launch, the corporate introduced Tuesday it was shutting down developer Firewalk Studios and shutting the e book on the notorious recreation. Firewalk staff will depart Sony Interactive Leisure (SIE) and the PlayStation mum or dad will “completely sundown” the sport, admitting that it didn’t hit its targets with the multiplayer title. Along with shuttering the Harmony developer, Sony mentioned it was additionally closing cellular video games developer Neon Koi.
Firewalk Studios Closed
Firewalk’s closure marks the top of an ignominious chapter for Sony, that noticed the corporate launch Harmony on August 23 to the sound of crickets. The $40 hero-shooter failed to seek out an viewers in a aggressive style stuffed with free-to-play choices, peaking out at a dismal 697 concurrent gamers on Steam earlier than it was scrubbed from PlayStation and PC storefronts and brought offline lower than two weeks after launch.
“We have now spent appreciable time these previous few months exploring all our choices,” Hermen Hulst, CEO of Studio Enterprise Group at SIE, mentioned in an inner e mail to staff. “After a lot thought, we’ve decided one of the best path ahead is to completely sundown the sport and shut the studio.”
Hulst mentioned sure points of Harmony didn’t attraction to sufficient gamers, regardless of a few of its “distinctive” qualities. “The PvP first individual shooter style is a aggressive area that is repeatedly evolving, and sadly, we didn’t hit our targets with this title. We are going to take the teachings realized from Harmony and proceed to advance our reside service capabilities to ship future development on this space.”
In an X (previously Twitter) publish Tuesday, Firewalk Studios signed off one final time, hailing its improvement group as “actually world-class”.
“We took some dangers alongside the way in which – marrying points of card battlers and combating video games with first-person-shooters – and though a few of these and different points of the IP did not land as we hoped, the thought of placing new issues into the world is essential to pushing the medium ahead,” the studio mentioned within the publish.
Firewalk is signing off one final time.
Firewalk started with the thought of bringing the enjoyment of multiplayer to a bigger viewers. Alongside the way in which we assembled an unbelievable group who had been capable of:
– Navigate rising a brand new startup right into a group throughout a world pandemic: Firewalk was…— Firewalk (@FirewalkStudios) October 29, 2024
Sony mentioned the choice to close each Firewalk and Neon Koi was given critical thought and was in the end the fitting one to “strengthen the group”. The corporate additionally mentioned it could work to put laid off staff from each builders inside its world portfolio of recreation studios the place potential.
Harmony Failure
Firewalk Studios was fashioned in 2018 as part of ProbablyMonsters, headed by Bungie veterans. Sony acquired the developer in April 2023 and reportedly pumped over $200 million into its first recreation, Harmony. Business insiders have claimed that the shooter, which Sony acquired as a part of its live-service push, price a reported $400 million to make and consequently represents Sony’s largest loss ever on a recreation.
A retro-futuristic sci-fi hero-shooter with an art-style and witty banter that resembled Guardians of the Galaxy, Harmony launched on August 23 at a $40 price ticket. The sport was virtually useless on arrival, with an estimated 10,000 copies offered on Steam and round 15,000 on PlayStation Retailer.
Double-digit concurrent participant counts led to Sony taking the sport offline on September 6 and issuing refunds to all gamers who had bought the sport. On the time, the corporate mentioned it could “discover choices,” which led some to imagine that Harmony would possibly return in a special type, maybe as a free-to-play title or on Sony’s recreation subscription service, PlayStation Plus.
In our overview of Harmony, we mentioned the sport was a “serviceable first-person hero-shooter, very a lot within the vein of Overwatch” that failed to tell apart itself in a crowded discipline in significant methods.
