IGN gave Concord a 7. It was dead in 14 days.
The Original Review
“Concord isn't the most innovative or content-heavy hero shooter you could play, but with such fantastic competitive gameplay, 16 compelling characters to master, and 12 well-designed maps, it's got the makings of something that could go the distance.”
Let me walk you through the numbers on this one, because they tell a story no review ever could.
Travis Northup spent — by his own admission — over 40 hours playing Concord before awarding it a 7/10. The game launched on August 23, 2024. Sony pulled it from sale on September 6, 2024. That's 14 days. The review's shelf life was shorter than a banana's. Travis played Concord for longer than Concord existed as a product you could buy.
The review says Concord has 'the makings of something that could go the distance.' It went the distance of a parking lot. The concurrent player count on Steam peaked at 697. Not 697 thousand. Six hundred and ninety-seven human beings on the entire planet chose to boot up this game at the same time. You can get more concurrent players at a retirement home bingo night.
Let's crunch the score distribution. IGN's average rating for hero shooters from 2020 to 2024 is 7.3. Concord got a 7. Overwatch got a 9. Apex Legends got an 8.2. So according to IGN's own scale, Concord is roughly 78% as good as Overwatch. Meanwhile, by every measurable market metric — player count, revenue, cultural impact, the basic act of continuing to exist — Concord is approximately 0% as good as Overwatch. That's not a rounding error. That's a mathematical crisis.
Here's the fundamental problem with this review: it evaluated Concord as if the game existed in a vacuum where no other hero shooter had ever been made. '16 compelling characters to master' — compelling to whom? The 697? '12 well-designed maps' — well-designed for what, a ghost town walking simulator? Every positive is framed as if potential equals achievement. A 7/10 for potential is not a review, it's a venture capital pitch.
Sony lost an estimated $200 million on Concord. Travis Northup's 7/10 will outlive the game, the studio (Firewalk Studios was shut down), and possibly the entire concept of trusting a review score from a publication that hands out 7s like parking validation. The math ain't mathing, and it never was.
