Sony has officially killed harmony And closing down the studio behind the game. harmonyThe competing team shooter from Firewalk Studios had its servers shut down just two weeks after its launch following poor sales. Firewalk's game director Ryan Ellis decided to shift himself into a more supporting role harmonyClash of Clans, and Sony had said it would consider its options for the project. The decision has come.
“After much consideration, we have decided that the best path forward is to permanently discontinue the game and close the studio,” Herman Hulst of Sony Interactive Entertainment's Studio Business Group said in a statement today. “I want to thank everyone at Firewalk for their craftsmanship, creative spirit and dedication.” a representative told Bloomberg News There were 172 employees at Firewalk Studios who would lose their jobs.
The online gaming business is brutal, and harmony It may have suffered from its long development time, which meant that the team's other shooters had already reached prominence and defined player expectations. Many similar games are free to play and support themselves financially with a battle pass or seasonal model. Maybe gamers are balking at the $40 price tag for a new property, or maybe the genre is just too crowded for it. harmony To muscle in.
Whatever the reason, today's news marks another difficult chapter for the game development world. It's an extraordinary situation for Firewalk Studios to have a commercial failure of this level, but it's yet another closure in an industry that has seen a lot of turmoil in recent years. Layoffs and shutdowns have been a top story in gaming, but there have been several recent cases like Firewalk, which was acquired by Sony Interactive Entertainment last spring. Netflix abruptly shut down its AAA studio last week, before the team had even announced a project. Microsoft shut down three studios in the ZeniMax family earlier this year. As fewer parties control an increasing share of the games industry, tolerance for experimentation and low profit margins is also likely to decrease. And this kind of sudden upheaval may become more common.
Update, October 29, 2024, 2:52 PM ET: Story updated with additional context harmonyFirewalk Studios employee headcount trends and widespread studio closures.