While America, and parts of the world have been dealing with a hot summer, this weekend was tepid for a couple of video games. This past Thursday, gamers saw the release of Flintlock: The Siege of Dawn and the open beta for Concord. While both games are in differing genres they share a couple of things. Concord and Flintlock: The Siege of Dawn are both DEI darlings that have failed to attract a significant number of players on PC.
Concord, which is Sony’s team-based multiplayer FPS shooter, saw a peak of 2,388 players on Thursday when the open beta first went live for Steam. But that number dropped by around 40% over the weekend and peaked to 1,177 players on Sunday. Flintlock: The Siege of Dawn, fared even worse for its opening weekend. Flintlock saw its highest player count on release day at 648 only for that number dropped to 400-500 each day after and during its opening weekend on the Steam platform.
Both games are summer releases; a time when kids are enjoying summer vacation and have a lot of free time. However Concord, developed by Firewalk Studios, is several years too late to cash in on the team-based multiplayer genre that gave rise to games such as Overwatch 2 (48,000 players Sunday) and Valorant or even Valve’s Team Fortress 2, a 17-year-old game that helped kick off the genre, which briefly hit 100,000 players on Sunday of the same weekend.
Other issues surrounding Concord was the lackluster reception to its reveal, criticism over it being a Guardians of the Galaxy-esque type of shooter, and that a PSN account is required for the game. The latter, which became a hotbed of controversy over Helldivers 2 (32,800 players on Sunday) which saw immediate success upon release only for it to be curtailed when the PSN requirement was finally added to the game.
Another point of contention was over Concord’s “diverse” character selection, which was a major industry talking point, which doesn’t include a single male character that is caucasian. Nor did there seem to be any standout characters that regular gamers latched on to. Finally, the $40 price point doesn’t appear to help Concord either as all its major competitors are free-to-play with no upfront price tag. So the fact that the beta was open to all should be highly disconcerting for Sony since Concord has failed to gain enough interest that gamers couldn’t be bothered to check out the open beta.
Flintlock: The Siege of Dawn, an action RPG developed by A44 Games, seemed to be a solid-looking game with an interesting setting. However, it was discovered that DEI-consultant agency Sweet Baby Inc had been involved with the game’s development as discovered by DEIDetected.com owner Kabrutus (@kabrutusrambo), who noticed in Edge Magazine an interview with Sweet Baby Inc CEO Kim Belair.
Flintlock also failed to resonate with gamers when A44Games COO Audrea Topps Harjo brought up the topic of colonialism, “Those gods are almost a symbol of colonialism.” Given that the game is set in a flintlock fantasy world, the discussion about colonialism and focus on the main character, Nor, being a woman of color, resulted in an already-dwindling interest for the game. Especially with SBI’s involvement which has a track record of poorly-received titles such as Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League.
However, while Steam player numbers have been less-than-stellar for Concord and Flintlock: The Siege of Dawn, the opposite could be true when it comes to the console versions. Unfortunately, there is no way to get those numbers unless the console owners, publishers, or developers wish to disclose player numbers for either game.
But for the PC platform, Concord and Flintlock: The Siege of Dawn are struggling to gain traction.
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[…] Companies changing their vision and ideas has been an alarmingly-increasing pattern in the gaming industry as developers and publishers cater to this vocal minority trumpeted by video game websites and journalists. The same group of people who yell and whine about game difficulty, female characters being attractive, etc. The outcome is that this has resulted in subpar video games and ever-declining sales numbers as both gamers and the general audience are unconvinced to purchase such titles as Concord and Flintlock: The Siege of Dawn. […]
[…] servers were shut down two weeks after launch and the game removed from digital platforms due to its vastly underwhelming reception. On Steam, the all-time high for number of players since the official launch, according to Steam […]