Harmony developer Firewalk Studios has been closed by Sony Interactive Leisure, in response to an inner electronic mail from CEO Hermen Hulst to staff. The failed shooter has been completely sundown, Hulst confirmed, and won’t return.
“After a lot thought, now we have decided one of the best path ahead is to completely sundown the sport and shut the studio,” Hulst mentioned in an electronic mail on Tuesday. “I wish to thank all of Firewalk for his or her craftsmanship, artistic spirit and dedication.”
Hulst defined that after taking Harmony offline in September, SIE “spent appreciable time these previous few months exploring all our choices” for the shooter. “The PvP first-person shooter style is a aggressive house that’s constantly evolving, and sadly, we didn’t hit our targets with this title,” he defined. “We’ll take the teachings discovered from Harmony and proceed to advance our live-service capabilities to ship future development on this space.”
Along with Firewalk Studios, Hulst introduced that one other Sony-owned studio, Neon Koi, will shut. Helsinki-based Neon Koi was growing a cell motion sport for PlayStation.
Harmony was initially launched in late August for PlayStation 5 and Home windows PC, then pulled from sale and brought offline two weeks later. On the time, Harmony sport director Ryan Ellis mentioned that the studio deliberate to “discover choices, together with these that may higher attain our gamers,” whereas it “decide[d] one of the best path forward” for the sport.
Harmony garnered headlines for its low participant depend on Steam at launch. In accordance with a report from IGN, analysts estimated that opening week gross sales had been uncharacteristically poor for a first-party sport printed by Sony — solely about 25,000 copies of Harmony had been estimated to be offered. Amid unhealthy press and lowering participant counts, Sony and Firewalk rapidly pulled the plug. Harmony went offline on Sept. 6, and clients who bought the sport had been refunded.
Sony and Firewalk had been open-ended about their plans for Harmony’s future, resulting in hypothesis that the sport may very well be re-released as a free-to-play sport — Harmony value $39.99 — or as a part of Sony’s PlayStation Plus subscription.
Firewalk Studios was based in 2018, as a part of the ProbablyMonsters sport studio collective based by Harold Ryan, who beforehand served as CEO and president of Future developer Bungie. Sony and ProbablyMonsters introduced a publishing deal for Firewalk’s debut sport in 2021. In April 2023, Sony introduced it deliberate to amass Firewalk from ProbablyMonsters.
