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Why was Concord DoA upon launch?
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this post was submitted on 13 Sep 2026
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Out of all these points, the key one is that it was $40 in a genre where the median price for entry is $0. That really deserves to be front and centre above everything else.
Everything you've said is completely accurate, and describes why Concorde failed, but the key to why it failed as hard as it did is the decision to slap a price tag on it.
To get away with being a $40 game in a free-to-play genre, they would have to have something so compellingly unique that it could not only stand out in the crowd, but stand head and shoulders above it.
Concorde was still destined to fail even without that decision, because, as you said, there was nothing unique about it. Forgettable, boring characters battling for unclear stakes in generic arenas with generic powers. No differentiation at all. But released as a free to play game it might at least have gone maybe a year before it collapsed.
But the sheer arrogance of taking this boring, also-ran, generic hero shooter clone and deciding that it was so special that it deserved a $40 price tag... That's what turned Concorde into the greatest failure in the history of video games.
I don't think free to play would have made any real difference to Concord (highguard says hi).
At the time of announcement, I was in a discord call, and I would say 9 or 10 people were interested at the cinematic trailer, when they had missed it being a multiplayer game, and they assumed it was a action RPG/ space opera.
Everyone who had any inclination of excitement, lost it immediately at the gameplay trailer.
They honestly didn't care for another multiplayer game, especially with Marvel Rivals having been played and looking better around then as well.
My point is not that free to play would have saved it. I was pretty clear about that. But the scale of Concord's failure is absolutely staggering even when compared to other high profile failures. Highguard peaked at 97,000 concurrent players on Steam. Concord's peak? 697. That is literally more than two orders of magnitude less.
So yes, even though Highguard ultimately failed, there's an argument to be made that with some continued investment it might have found a core player base and built that into some kind of ongoing source of revenue. Would it have made back its development costs? Probably not, but there's a chance. But Concord's failure is in a whole different league. It didn't just fail, it smashed into a brick wall at 200mph. And that was only possible because of the sheer arrogance of slapping a price tag on it.
Alternative theory: launching a free to play game in any genre these days may as well be buying an extremely expensive lottery ticket. The top 10 charts in player numbers, not just on Steam but on any platform, are entrenched games that have been out for 10+ years and perhaps Valorant. It takes a lot of players to financially sustain a free to play game, and without the price tag, they would have only burned through money faster. When the game was free pre-release, it had already proven that there was no interest in the game. 2XKO was one of the most popular fighting games out there by player numbers, but for what it needed to make that make financial sense, it was nowhere close. Highguard was free to play and had a tremendous amount of players at launch, but it barely lasted longer than Concord.
I didn't say free to play would have saved it. It was destined for failure either way. I said that it failed as hard as it did because they decided to charge for it.
It was a total loss on their books either way, so it sure looks like free to play would have failed exactly as hard.
From a business point of view, sure. But that was never my point.