Sony Shuts Down Fan Revival of Concord With Legal Threats as Players Rally to Resurrect Shuttered Shooter

Sony is cracking down hard on fans trying to resurrect Concord, the quickly canceled online shooter that was yanked from stores just two weeks after launch. The company has issued a series of DMCA takedowns and is now flexing legal muscle, forcing the volunteer fan team behind the resurrection to freeze all new invites and pause private testing of the game.

Concord’s brief run was messy from the start. The shooter launched for PS5 and PC in August 2024 but reportedly sold fewer than 25,000 copies before Sony pulled the plug. At the time, the official word promised to let Firewalk Studios “determine the best path ahead”, but that path never materialized. By the end of October, Firewalk Studios had closed, and the game’s director Ryan Ellis had already stepped down.

Fan Project Gets Concord Playable—Until Sony Steps In

If you were one of the handful who bought Concord before it vanished, there was a glimmer of hope. A group of volunteer developers worked for months to get the game functioning again on private servers. They managed to wrangle the character select, menus, and even matchmaking—making Concord playable (if buggy) for the first time since its shutdown.

“The project is still WIP,” a volunteer posted in the Concord Delta Discord. “But it’s playable, but buggy.” The team described the effort: a long process of reverse engineering Concord’s server protocols, getting enough restored that they could finally shout: “Hey. After a long time of reverse engineering [and] server development, we just managed to play a match of Concord!”

With the private servers up, the group started inviting players to participate in playtests, focusing on people who could prove they already owned the game files legally. Anyone posting or asking for copyrighted files got a swift warning. “I know this sucks for people who got forcefully refunded, but lawyers are most likely already watching everything we do and I want to ensure this project stays as legal as we realistically can do,” one developer explained in Discord. The team repeatedly reminded everyone that sharing or distributing copyrighted files was strictly off-limits.

Still, Sony’s legal team wasn’t impressed. The company quickly started submitting copyright claims against YouTube and social media videos showing the project in action. And while the fan team itself hasn’t confirmed if Sony reached out directly, the threat of legal consequences was enough to freeze their efforts immediately.

One core developer announced on Discord, “Due to worrying legal action we’ve decided to pause invites for the time being.”

Concord’s Shutdown Fuels Debate Over Player Rights

The saga isn’t just about a canceled shooter and a determined fanbase. Concord’s abrupt shutdown caught the eye of lawmakers in the UK, landing in the House of Commons as an example of why better video game consumer protections are needed.

One MP brought the case to the floor: “A recent example is Concord, a game released for PlayStation 5 and Windows in August 2024. Following a disappointing launch, Sony Interactive Entertainment made a commercial decision to shut it down. To their credit, they did refund all purchases, but this isn’t always the case.”

The wider issue is clear. Once a publisher shuts off online servers, players are locked out of games they paid for. Even a full refund can’t compensate for lost content, communities, and memories, and not every company is as thorough as Sony with compensation.

Concord may be gone, but its disappearance, and Sony’s legal blitz, are echoing through the gaming community and government halls alike.