15 November 2025

‘Worrying Legal Action’ Concord’s Return May Be Short Lived

By newsgame

The team behind the surprising revival of the ill-fated shooter, Concord, has seemingly run into a potential issue with invites being placed on hold due to “worrying legal action.” After attempting a bit live-service push, Sony has begun to rethink its plans after a number of high-profile failures, with Concord typically being the poster child of what can really go wrong.

Concord never seemed to get off on the right foot following a full reveal during a May 2024 State of Play, which showcased a Guardians of the Galaxy-like CG trailer, followed by gameplay that confirmed the title was actually an online hero shooter. Fans appeared to be less than enthused about the reveal, while others criticized Concord for its generic-looking characters. Following a beta session and eventual launch months later, Concord failed to land with players, forcing Sony to issue refunds and shut both the game and development studio down for good.

Concord Revival Gets Hit With DMCA Takedowns

While Concord remains one of Sony’s highest profile flops, potentially costing the company $400 million and causing other internal projects to be canceled in a domino-style effect, the game may have resonated with some. In fact, one Concord player was still active in the game weeks after the servers were officially taken offline. Fast-forward to over a year later, when a dedicated group of fans announced their intentions to unofficially bring the game back online.

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The Concord revival is still very early in development, with the small team showcasing its efforts in a couple of videos, which also show off more than a few bugs remaining in the current reverse engineered build. However, following the reveal, the videos have been hit with DMCA takedowns from a group called MarkScan Enforcement, a group that is commonly associated with big companies like Sony, Microsoft, and others when removing emulation, mods, and similar content. The recent activity has prompted the small team to send out a message, indicating that they’ve paused invites to the current build due to “worrying legal action.” It’s unknown what this means for the future of the project, but it appears that Sony has caught wind of what’s going on and likely doesn’t approve.

Concord fan puts their refund to good use

While it’s unknown how the Concord revival will ultimately play out, Sony has continued to talk about the lessons it has learned from its live-service push. Sony Interactive CEO Hermen Hulst went on record saying that the company won’t make the same mistakes again, while praising successful efforts like Helldivers 2. Unfortunately for Sony, it’s still deep in uncharted waters as Bungie’s Destiny 2 struggles to keep players happy, while there also remains many questions surrounding the extraction shooter Marathon.

Other live-service efforts have also started to fall by the wayside as Sony backs away from live-service risk. Two live-service titles were rumored to have been canceled, coming from Bluepoint Games and Bend Studio, while Naughty Dog’s The Last of Us Factions game ended development back in 2023. Fairgames, another online live-service title from Haven Studios, has also seemingly lost more key developers, which has left many wondering if that game will eventually but canceled as well.