Concord Steam DB concurrent player data
Former Dragon Age director Mark Darrah recently explained why he believes it is very possible that Sony and Firewalker Studios could have blown $400 million developing Concord.
Darrah’s comments come in the wake of a rumor from Colin Moriarty claiming that a Concord insider informed him “that Concord cost about $400 million to make.
I spoke extensively with someone who worked on Concord, and it’s so much worse than you think.
It was internally referred to as “The Future of PlayStation” with Star Wars-like potential, and a dev culture of “toxic positivity” halted any negative feedback.
Making it cost $400m. pic.twitter.com/F5O0oy4gaQ
— Colin Moriarty (@longislandviper) September 20, 2024
Moriarty went on to reveal that ProbablyMonsters, the original owner of Firewalk Studios and Concord before selling to PlayStation Studios, Sony, and the game’s original investors had spent $200 million on the game before it even made it to its Alpha state.
He said, “Up to the point of the game went to Alpha state they had already spent $200 million on it. And it’s unclear how much of that money is from ProbablyMonsters and the original investors into the game, and how much of that was from Sony.”
Next, he shared, “When the game had $200 million spent on it and was basically in an Alpha form in Quarter 1 of 2023 from that point until the game launched Sony spent another $200 million on it.”
“The scuttlebutt behind the scenes about Concord is that the game was in a laughable shape when it was shown, basically when the Alpha was ready to go.” he continued. “It was in such horrible shape that Sony felt they needed to spend that much money again. So 200 + 200 to get the game to the MVP (Minimum Viable Product) status. Not to the status of it being a great game. To get it to just viability.”
“A major expense was to urgently outsource much of the game to other studios to finish building the game out,” he shared. “And that two fundamental games were not worked on at all up to the point in which the game was shown in Alpha: onboarding, nothing about that. There was nothing about how players make their character all that kind of stuff or choose their character and get there. And monetization. Two very expensive, very specific and boutique things that happen to games like this.”
Darrah reacted to this rumor and shared his analysis in a recent YouTube upload where he said, “If we start from a pure development perspective, we don’t include any externalities, then the easiest way to look at this is from a pure staff month perspective. Could we have spent $400 million just on staff?”
“That’s not a perfect way to do the math because obviously, you have other external factors, but it’s a pretty good indication,” he added. “If we can get even close then it’s at least possible that Concord did in fact cost $400 million.”
From there, Darrah explained how he broke up the game’s development beginning in 2018 when Firewalk Studios was founded and going up until April 30th, 2023 when it entered Alpha. He noted that the game spent 63 months in pre-Alpha and 15 months from Alpha until launch.
Next, Darrah assumed that Firewalk spent $15,000 per month on staff including “all of their supplies and computers, office space. Additionally, it would include any central resources that aren’t factored into the team. So HR.”
He even speculated that “$15,000 for a fully loaded staff month might actually be low.”
READ: PlayStation Removes ‘Concord’ Downloads From Players’ PlayStation 5 Consoles
From there Darrah explained that in order to get to Moriarty’s $200 million before Alpha and then $200 million after Alpha number, Firewalk would need an average team size of 212 employees pre-Alpha and then scale up to around 900 after Alpha.
He shared, “It’s possible if we do it purely through staffing with just a fairly simple ramp.”
Next, he decided to change up the costs and estimated that ProbablyMonsters spent around $25 million between 2016-2018 before creating Firewalk Studios given developer statements that the game was in development for 8 years.
Darrah also added $6 million, which he described as “sunk costs,” but explained it could be Sony or Firewalk hiding costs for other projects that employees might be working on that do not necessarily have anything to do with Concord, but are placed in the Concord because the game is seen as too big to fail.
He also applied an estimated $100 million acquisition of Firewalk Studios by Sony into the $400 million total despite Moriarty making it clear that the $400 million was the game’s development outside of Sony’s acquisition of Firewalk.
Nevertheless, with these new numbers this lowered his average pre-Alpha team size to 130 and the average team during and after Alpha would be 650. He noted that this is “super duper within the realm of possibility.”
Interestingly, Darrah noted before he started crunching numbers he thought the rumor was “not even remotely plausible that Concord cost $400 million.”
However, he noted, “But when I sat down and did the math, especially once you start applying in a few externalities for cost, yeah, it actually does start to look like that number makes a lot of sense.”
He even notes that there could be higher costs such as increased staff salaries, building costs, or others.
He then shared, “You can start to see how a project that runs as long as this one did with a team as big as it sounds like they had can start to get really expensive.”
As for whether it did cost $400 million, he speculated, “I’m not sure. I think we can make it plausible that it did. Certainly, for a game with this relatively small scope it’s hard to see where all of that money went. It would have had to have been lost in iteration. It would have had to have been lost in inefficiencies due to team structure or massive team sizes. Like we just went through, I think you can make the math work and it might represent reality. It’s also possible the sources providing this number are exaggerating, or misinformed, or getting their math wrong in some other way.”
“So I’m certainly a lot more willing to believe this number than I was before I started this exercise, I still don’t know for sure that $400 million is the actual number,” he concluded.
What do you make of Darrah’s analysis that lends credence to the fact that Sony, Firewalk Studios, and ProbablyMonsters spent $400 million to develop Concord?
News
Twitch Promises More Transparency Over Bans After FallenShadow Outcry, Assures “There Is No Mod Who Hates Vtubers”
FallenShadow finger-wags moderators over her ban on Twitch In light of the controversy surrounding the dubious ban of vtuber FallenShadow, Twitch has sworn to be more transparent in communicating their reasons for temporarily removing any given streamer from the platform….
Blizzard Reportedly Working On A New ‘Starcraft’ Shooter – Will The Third Time Be The Charm?
Nova blows Arthas a taunting kiss goodbye in Heroes of the Storm (2015), Blizzard Entertainment Blizzard Entertainment is reportedly developing a new StarCraft shooter, marking the company’s third attempt at bringing the beloved sci-fi universe into the first-person shooter genre. Bloomberg writer Jason…
‘Helldivers 2’ Introduces The Democracy Space Station: Are You Ready To Change The Course Of The Galactic War?
A Helldiver is ready to spread democracy in Helldivers 2 (2024), Arrowhead Game Studios Arrowhead has thrown a new challenge into the Galactic War of Helldivers 2. There’s a new Major Order that tasks players with securing a location for the…
‘Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League’ Still Trying To Cling To Life, Launches New Zoe Lawton DLC To Less Than 300 Players
Zoe Lawless (TBA) is absolutely giddy to join Task Force X in Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League, Rocksteady Studios (2024) Rocksteady has a lot in store for Season 3 of Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League – however, the community isn’t…
‘Assassin’s Creed Shadows’ Dev Team Reportedly Using Delay To Address “Many Of The Historical And Cultural Concerns”, Problems Said To Have Been Caused By Historians Being “Brought Onto The Project Much Later Than Usual”
Yasuke (TBA) draws his rifle in Assassin’s Creed Shadows (2024), Ubisoft A new report has potentially shone a light on just how Ubisoft is planning to use the extra Assassin’s Creed Shadows dev time allotted to them by the game’s recent delay….
‘Ghostbusters: Answer The Call’ Director Paul Feig Blames Backlash On “The Political Climate Of The Time”, Claims Critics Were “Trump Supporters”
Erin Gilbert (Kristen Wiig) lets loose in Ghostbusters: Answer the Call (2016), Columbia Pictures In yet again attempting to blame the film’s failure on the undefined spectre of ‘bigotry’, Ghostbusters: Answer the Call director Paul Feig has claimed that not only was…
End of content
No more pages to load