Borderlands 4 Dev Has Important Advice for Concord Studio

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Borderlands 4 Dev Has Important Advice for Concord Studio

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.

As a seasoned gamer who has witnessed the rise and fall of numerous gaming projects, I can’t help but feel a pang of empathy for the developers at Concord. The sudden pull of their game just two weeks after its launch is a bitter pill to swallow, especially after eight years of hard work.

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 unexpected announcement about Concord’s passing, the game’s narrative is extensive, having been in development for eight years according to reports. Concord was set to be Sony’s venture into the competitive hero-shooter market, offering a diverse range of characters, vibrant visuals, and numerous power-shift abilities. However, Concord encountered difficulties, with its launch resulting in poor sales and low player numbers. Despite some initial struggles, the game failed to build momentum prior to release, and its actual debut was surprisingly disastrous, prompting Sony to announce the removal of the game from their platform just days later. With news about Concord’s closure becoming public knowledge, a team leader working on the next Borderlands installment has offered some valuable insights

The collapse of Concord led narrative director Sam Winkler from Borderlands 4 to share a lesson he learned the hard way during Gearbox’s Battleborn shutdown. In a tweet, Winkler advised anyone involved in Concord (or any live service game) to quickly save their work. “I didn’t have my work captured when I was working on Battleborn – my first shipped content ever! – and I deeply regretted not doing so when I could,” Winkler said. He only managed to get his work saved later, thanks to a fan-made mod. Similar to Concord, Battleborn struggled upon release with mediocre reviews and a small player base. Both games tried but ultimately failed to find their niche in the competitive hero-shooter genre, though the demise of Concord was more immediate

Borderlands Developer Shares Advice for Concord Team

In a bid to combine the whimsicality of the Borderlands series with a fusion of hero-shooter and Multiplayer Online Battle Arena (MOBA) features, Battleborn was conceived. However, it encountered numerous problems at its debut, chief among them being its simultaneous release with Overwatch, another vibrant and colorful hero-shooter by Blizzard Entertainment. Launched in 2016 and delisted in 2019, the game’s online support was permanently discontinued in 2021. The Concord team has until September 6 to retrieve any remaining data from Battleborn before it becomes unavailable forever

It’s uncertain what the future holds for Sony’s hero-shooter, with whispers suggesting that the game Concord might eventually transition to a free-to-play model. Despite the game’s upcoming shutdown, some dedicated players are still finding enjoyment in it. However, the hero-shooter/MOBA genre is about to get more competitive, as Valve prepares to debut their new IP, Deadlock, into the market. This new entry from the renowned video game studio could potentially have an impact on Concord, although Deadlock is currently only available as a beta version

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2024-09-04 19:14