Firewalk Studios’ Harmony launched roughly two weeks in the past to little or no notable response. Gross sales allegedly sit at round 25,000 copies, whereas the general vital response is seemingly one big “meh” with a 62 Metascore based mostly on 40 vital evaluations.
It rapidly grew to become referred to as “This took what number of years to develop?” and “It had what number of peak concurrent gamers on Steam?”. There have been expectations that it will chug together with its roadmap and add that promised beauty retailer with microtransactions, oblivious to plummeting participant counts. Nonetheless, in a latest PlayStation Weblog put up, Firewalk introduced the sudden – Harmony is being pulled from storefronts on September sixth.
Not solely will all prospects on PC and PS5 obtain refunds, however the aggressive shooter may also go offline. When you bought a bodily copy, that field has turn out to be costlier than the typical paperweight or a collector’s merchandise. Both manner, its roadmap is out the window, and the longer term is unsure.
What spurred this choice, apart from, effectively, actuality being what it’s? As recreation director Ryan Ellis famous, “Whereas many qualities of the expertise resonated with gamers, we additionally acknowledge that different points of the sport and our preliminary launch didn’t land the way in which we’d meant.” After Harmony goes offline, Firewalk will “discover choices,” which incorporates these that can “higher attain our gamers.”
We’ve seen loads of disasters over the previous handful of years in video video games. Cyberpunk 2077’s launch and being pulled from the PlayStation Retailer on high of full refunds for gamers. Anthem’s launch and damaged post-launch guarantees, to say nothing of the devastating impression on BioWare’s already tarnished popularity.
Marvel’s Avengers and its failures, together with extreme losses for Sq. Enix, adopted by its delisting from all storefronts final yr. Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League (particularly following latest layoffs at Rocksteady attributable to its underperformance). Cranium and Bones. The record goes on.
Nonetheless, there’s in all probability by no means been a big-budget live-service multiplayer title from a serious writer taken offline and refunded in simply two weeks. Harmony is formally Sony’s largest failure in years. It’s one more indictment of the stay service mannequin in a yr with no scarcity of the identical.
Whereas this case could also be as momentary, it’s value noting that there’s no ETA for the sport’s return. Exploring “choices” might imply something from fully revamping the core mechanics to remodeling it into a wholly completely different title like, say, a co-op PvE shooter. It might additionally imply shuttering your entire endeavor and slicing losses. As a lot as this measure might be seen as saving face, you would additionally view it as Sony not eager to burn any more cash on sustaining servers, particularly with such low participant counts.
Even when server prices weren’t the explanation, there’s nonetheless the difficulty of promoting a product whose predominant objective – aggressive multiplayer – wouldn’t have sufficient gamers to make sure a gentle stream of matches. Why would the writer spend money on its post-launch help when new seasons, maps and characters clearly gained’t transfer the needle? Think about how low present numbers should have been if Sony didn’t even faux it might bounce again.
You can argue that Harmony’s destiny was determined again in Might. The low cost Guardians of the Galaxy aura from the cinematic trailer did little to ignite curiosity. As soon as the gameplay debuted, you would really feel the near-universal rejection. It wasn’t even a one-off phenomenon – curiosity ranges had been worryingly low throughout the beta, even when it grew to become obtainable to all gamers on PC and PS5.
Then once more, you would return two years to when PlayStation introduced it will ship ten live-service titles by March 2026. How the acquisition of Bungie aids of their improvement and “significantly accelerates” plans, per former CEO Jim Ryan (emphasis on “former”).
Contemplating the variety of stay service failures by that time, there was loads of skepticism, particularly when PlayStation had garnered common approval for its single-player efforts. In a world the place most builders and publishers couldn’t take the trace about video games as a service, efforts like Horizon Forbidden West, God of Warfare Ragnarok, Returnal, Ghost of Tsushima, Marvel’s Spider-Man, and extra had been considered as beacons of hope.
There was some hope that these titles would comply with within the footsteps of Ghost of Tsushima’s wonderful Legends mode. The standalone multiplayer title spun off from Factions in The Final of Us additionally held some promise regardless of little details about its gameplay. Sadly, layoffs occurred, tasks had been cancelled, and the remaining was historical past. Arrowhead Studios’ Helldivers 2 continues to face out as Sony’s lone success in its live-service endeavor regardless of having a horrific launch attributable to server points.
It’s all of the extra irritating when it nonetheless has Fairgame$ from Haven Studios within the works. There’s some hope it might stand out, particularly since there aren’t many competent heist titles, however time will inform. The much less mentioned about Bungie’s Marathon, reportedly going through points behind the scenes, the higher, even when that’s a multi-platform launch.
As for Harmony, loads of causes had been cited for its failure. Charging $40 for a aggressive shooter when the market already has superior free choices like Overwatch 2 and Valorant – heck, even Valve’s Impasse, in case you obtained invited – was already considered as ludicrous. Character designs and kits had been uninspired. The Crew Bonuses and protracted deployables had been gimmicky and little else. The weekly vignettes fulfilled little objective regardless of wanting graphically fairly.
Nonetheless, maybe worst of all, it’s the dearth of a compelling gameplay hook – a motive to play and get invested. Heck, have a look at Marvel Rivals. Regardless of being a hero shooter and taking a number of cues from Overwatch, with lots of the similar modes we’ve seen numerous occasions, the closed playtest in July peaked at 52,671 concurrent gamers on Steam.
Even with that enthusiasm, which far exceeded Harmony’s beta numbers on PC, NetEase isn’t deviating from its free-to-play mannequin for launch. Why? As a result of on high of realizing how the competitors works, it needs to – shock, shock – make it accessible to as many individuals as attainable. No price ticket. No locking heroes. No PSN account linking.
I might go on about different live-service efforts which have proven that the style isn’t as horrendous as efforts like Cranium and Bones, Suicide Squad, and now Harmony make it out to be, however that’s inappropriate. Maybe Sony knew that Harmony would underperform and launched it anyway to attempt to recoup no matter investments had been made. Possibly it thought that word-of-mouth might result in it selecting up over time. On the very worst, you would argue that it was despatched to die, although I’ve a tough time believing Sony would spend money on any advertising and marketing if that had been the case.
It’s saying one thing when Harmony discovering a worthwhile route is the least seemingly final result. Possibly it might occur, however for all these comeback tales within the business, there are a lot that don’t pan out. Sony will maintain chugging on on the finish of the day, maybe focusing extra on the single-player titles and blockbusters that made it such a giant deal.
Harmony will fade into reminiscence, in all probability sooner somewhat than later. What is going to turn out to be of Firewalk Studios, particularly given the variety of layoffs in latest occasions, is anybody’s guess. Nonetheless, nothing will change simply how unprecedented this complete state of affairs is, even after the whole lot we’ve seen within the stay service area up to now.
