Firewalk Studios Releases Statement On Closure

As a seasoned gamer with decades of experience under my belt, I’ve seen studios rise and fall like waves in the gaming ocean. The closure of Firewalk Studios, though regrettable, is a tale as old as time. Their journey from a small startup to a team delivering top-tier gameplay on next-gen consoles during a pandemic is nothing short of heroic.

Sony recently declared that Firewalk Studios will cease operations following the unsuccessful debut of their project, Concord. Not long after this news broke, Firewalk Studios shared a farewell message about the studio’s shutdown via their social media platforms.

With a final farewell, Firewalk is saying goodbye, it’s time to part ways. Firewalk initially started with a vision to share the delight of multiplayer gaming with a broader community.

It then goes into more detail about what the studio was able to accomplish during its time.

During our journey, we dared to combine elements from card battlers, fighting games, and first-person-shooters. Not all of these experiments and other aspects of our intellectual property had the impact we intended, but introducing fresh ideas is essential for advancing the entertainment industry.

You can read the full statement from Firewalk Studios below.

172 individuals are now jobless due to the studio’s shutdown. Sony has yet to reply about whether any Firewalk employees might be offered a chance to transfer to different studios under PlayStation.

Firewalk is signing off one last time.

Firewalk’s journey started with the goal of sharing the excitement of multiplayer gaming with a broader community. Throughout this adventure, we managed to gather an extraordinary group of individuals who were capable of:

Navigate growing a new startup into a team during a global pandemic: Firewalk was founded in 2018 and was very small for its first couple years, only entering full Production in 2022.
Build a new, customized next-generation FPS engine in Unreal 4 -> 5, delivering top-tier gameplay feel, beautiful worlds, and a performant 60fps technical experience on a stable and scalable backend on PS5 and PC to hundreds of thousands of players in our beta.
Manage an acquisition / integration while readying technical and preliminary tests.
And ultimately ship and deliver a great FPS experience to players- even if it landed much more narrowly than hoped against a heavily consolidated market.

In our journey, we dared to blend elements from card battlers, fighting games, and first-person shooters, and while not all these innovations and other aspects of our intellectual property resonated as we intended, introducing fresh ideas is essential for progressing and evolving the medium.

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