Concord has been in the media for far longer than it has been available to play, at least as of writing this, there are rumors the game will return in some form of free-to-play state, but in this article, I will be talking about a very contentious topic. Budgets! Not only in budgets in general but more specifically Concord and how it got to its rumored 400 million dollar budget, which makes it one of the biggest failures in the history of the video game industry.

Most of my research is diving into what Colin Moriarty presents in Sacred Symbols Episodes 325 and 326. He starts by saying he wasn’t going to ever talk about Concord again and says he’s left his “journalism career” behind him, but an unnamed person who worked deeply on Concord reached out to him. Colin states that he has even verified who that person is, and through 3-4 interactions, they conversed extensively.
Summary of the Points from Episode 325 of Sacred Symbols (Starts at 59 Minute Mark)
“Concord cost about 400 million dollars to make”
“In the first quarter of 2023 concord entered into an alpha state, before Sony had purchased the team”
“Before purchasing Firewalk, Sony had worked closely with probably monsters which were the original owners of Firewalk”
“Probably monsters was working with Firewalk from around 2020-2021”
“Up until concord had entered alpha state, 200 million dollars was already spent on the game”
“it is unclear if up to this point, how much of that 200 million was investors/Probably monsters and how much of it was from Sony/SIE.
“From early 2023 where the game was in alpha till it launched, another 200 million dollars was spent on the game
“A major expense was urgently outsourcing the game to other studios, to finish building the game out”
“2 fundamental aspects of the game were not worked on at the time of alpha, 1, on boarding and 2 monetization”
“Internally the game was considered the future of PlayStation with heavy cross media references”
“System of toxic positivity surrounding the game which did not allow anyone to change the course of the game”
“400 million dollar number is not including the cost to purchase the team”
“Concord is Sony’s biggest release game by budget to date”
“It is the biggest loss they (Sony) have ever had on a project”
Quotes from Episode 326 (Starts at 29 Minute Mark)
Reiterates 4 unique parts
- Ambition Sony and Firewalk had for it was enormous
- Game was extremely expensive to make
- The studio making it barely had created anything worthwhile in that time
- Criticism was of the project was nonexistent – toxic positivity
“Ethan Gach of Kotaku verified the toxic positivity aspect of this* – https://x.com/ethangach/status/1837163976452411510
“People are misunderstanding the role of probably monsters, who they are, and how much money they had”
“Spider-Man 2 costing 350 million dollars supports the fact that Sony itself are spending a tremendous amount on their games”
My Corroboration
Here I am going to present the information that I dug up.
On Feb. 26, 2018, PeopleKnot Inc. applied to trademark Concord.

Sometime in late 2019, PeopleKnot Inc. transitioned into the entity that is still around today named Probably Monsters. The individual at the helm of Probably Monsters is former Bungie CEO Harold Ryan. In 2021, PlayStation and Probably Monsters announced a partnership. Herman Hulst states that they (SIE) will publish Firewalk’s first game. Even though the partnership was announced in 2021, Hulst states “We’ve been working together now for two years. We started pretty much on day one.”
In 2022, Herold Ryan stated, “We’re proud and humbled to announce we’ve closed our Series A raise at $250M”. This is after the announced partnership with Sony, but Harold also comments that they’ve secured independence through Series A funding, allowing Probably Monsters to invest that cash into their people.
On April 20, 2023, PlayStation announced that they have “entered into an agreement with ProbablyMonsters Inc. to acquire Firewalk Studios, a studio of industry-leading creatives developing an original AAA multiplayer game for PlayStation5 and PC.”
Through the trademark assignment cover sheet, we can deduce that the purchase of Firewalk and Concord went through on July 24th, 2023. And after this, Sony was in complete control of the project. This was also when the proposed heavy outsourcing took place in a sprint to complete the game in time for its August 2024 launch.

In my mind, the ideas that we know as fact line up with the points of Sacred’s unknown source. Firstly, what do we know as fact?
- The amount of professional roles that worked on the game from the in-game credits and Moby Games. This number includes the team’s Concord was outsourced to, which Moby Games credits as 1,972 professional roles.
- The amount of money Probably Monsters fundraised before selling Firewalk (the team) and Concord (the game) to SIE. “We’re proud and humbled to announce we’ve closed our Series A raise at $250M.”
Conclusion
If you look at the Probably Monsters website, you will see that they have released nothing as of October, 13th, 2024. The most they have done is incubate a team and a property which was then promptly sold off. They state that they still have 2 teams working on Triple-A fare alongside other incubation teams, but this makes me question how much of that 250 million dollars in Series A funding was used on Concord and Firewalk. This next statement is also conjecture but makes me believe that one of the main courses of action Probably Monsters needed to take to remain afloat was to sell Firewalk and Concord to Sony.
Outside of this, all I can do is chop up some numbers and present them. Hypothesis time! Let’s just say in the past year, 1,972 professionals were actively working on Concord throughout SIE, Firewalk, and the outsourcing teams. Each of these professionals makes roughly $90,000 per year on average. Doing some really basic math the number comes out to one hundred seventy-seven million, four hundred eighty thousand dollars ($177,480,000). This number would be around how much money Sony drained into merely the workforce that worked on Concord for just one year. This cost is just for the workforce; it wouldn’t include the cost of marketing, purchasing the team, and the IP.
The key takeaway is that nothing is too big to fail. Injecting copious amounts of cash and manpower into a game may be to the detriment of creating good, unique ideas. Something I learned from researching this game is the idea of toxic positivity. Sometimes, the heads of these companies are so stubborn and set in their path that they end up blinded by their imaginary world. Not wanting to listen to people internally or even glance at what the opposition is doing is a recipe for failure.
I want to make it clear that the information I’m presenting is from my own research. However, through my research, I am determining that Concord‘s budget did end up somewhere close to the proposed 400 million dollar number, if not exceeding it. But I implore you, the reader to be a free thinker, and research for yourself to come to your own conclusion!
4 comments
[…] to the authors investigationsthe company Probably Monsters, which was responsible for creating the shooter, has not completed a […]
[…] Lords of Gaming writer Subeg Dhaliwal shares new information that may corroborate this claim. They found the trademark filing for Concord in the […]
[…] The game is ready to take a stab at Overwatch 2‘s dominance in the hero shooter genre, where others have failed. No doubt the most enticing feature is the familiar Marvel characters that players will control. […]
[…] dollars. When seemingly every month there was a game from a studio with several hundred people and $100+ million dollar budget, the small team labors of love have to fight even harder for attention. And fight they did. While […]
Comments are closed.