A transgender singer who uses the name Jamila Adderley confirmed that Firewalk Studios turned him into the freegunner Bazz in Concord.

A screenshot from Concord (2024), Firewalk Studios

According to The Pink News, Adderley wrote on Instagram, “I had to go for a walk because I just don’t like it when PlayStation wants to turn me into the baddest, knife-wielding assassin in all the land.”

He added, “That’s right, yours truly as free-gunner Bazz in PlayStation’s new multi-player video game Concord.

The Instagram appears to have been edited since it now just states, “The Baddest 🔪🎮♥️.”

TheMilaJam on Instagram

In the game, the character has listed she/her pronouns, but given the original post that from Adderley it is clear that Firewalk Studios made the character transgender.

A screenshot of the character Bazz in Concord (2024), Firewalk Studios

It is likely Firewalk Studios intends to make it explicit through its in-game cinematic vigenettes that it said it would release weekly. The company’s Director of IP Kim Kreines explained, “Every character brings their own unique personality, skills, and wide-ranging perspectives to the crew.”

She also detailed, “Every week when you log in to Concord, you will be welcomed with a new cinematic vignette that will give you a chance to see our characters off the job. They will feature ongoing narrative arcs that grow the characters’ stories and relationships and unpack the broader Concord galaxy.”

A screenshot from Concord (2024), Firewalk Studios

Interestingly, the developers appeared to have removed the LGBT tag from the game when it launched on Steam. As noted by former World of Warcraft Team Lead Mark Kern aka Grummz, the game initially had the LGBT tag as its top ranked tag.

 

However, as noted by Steam user Moddingspree the tag was removed. The user wrote, “LGBT and political tags removed and blacklisted.”

He continued, “The developers made a big deal about this game being for ‘modern audiences’ (all 600 of them), but for some reason demanded steam to not only remove these two tags but also to blacklist them plus any similar tag. It’s too late, people already know that this ‘game’ has a clear agenda… I mean, the characters speak for themselves.”

Moddingspree on Steam

As noted in Valve’s Steamworks Documentation the top 5 tags are created by the developer. It states, ““The tags given the most weight govern your visibility more than those given less. Your title’s top 5 tags should paint a fairly clear picture of your game as those tags will also be used to describe your game. Tags are ordered on your game page by the amount of weight each has on your game, as a result of your own sorting in the Tag Wizard. This can be modified over time as a number of players apply particular tags to your game. Some store filters prioritize the first 15 tags, so be sure that these are sorted in order of relevance to your title.”

A screenshot from Concord (2024), Firewalk Studios

The removal of the LGBTQ+ tag did not appear to garner any purchases for the game. In fact, not many people purchased it at all. The game hit a peak concurrent player count of 697 on Steam the day it released and has been bleeding players ever since. The most recent 24-hour peak was just barely above 100 at 110. That’s an 84% decline less than two weeks.

It is likely the game will have a double digit peak some time this week.

Concord Steam DB concurrent player data

It does not seem to be any better on PlayStation. According to PSNProfiles.com only 1,303 people own the game.

Furthermore, only 1,264 people achieved the most common trophy for the game “First Takedown” which requires players to get your first elimination.

A screenshot of PSNProfiles.com showing the First Takedown achievement for Concord (2024), Firewalk Studios

This information appears to confirm a report from True Trophies at the end of August that noted player count for the game was extraordinarily low.

The outlet shared at the time, “With no one collecting Concord trophies on PSN, Firewalk’s first PS5 game is in #147 place in our popularity chart.” For clarity, True Trophies explains that their chart is “made using a representative sample of 3.1 million active PSN accounts (not just TrueTrophies accounts, courtesy of GameInsights).”

In fact, in a more recent update shared on September 2, 2024 the outlet noted that Concord had fallen even further down its chart, “We’ve also got to acknowledge the horror show that is Concord. I don’t know that I’ve ever seen an AAA game flop this hard since I’ve started writing these every Monday. Last week, it was in a dreary #147. Now Concord is the #180 most popular PS5 game.”

A screenshot from Concord (2024), Firewalk Studios

What do you make of this report?