Live-service failuresare becoming an increasingly common sight in the games industry as publishers desperately attempt to capture the lucrative magic of juggernauts likeFortnite. We’ve seen countless high-profile releases, from the unfortunately titledBabylon’s Fallto the less-than-triumphantMarvel’s Avengers, collapse in on themselves afterstruggling to carve out a niche in the genre. But none have been as public a spectacle asConcord.
After just two weeks, PlayStation’s flagship hero shooter was taken offline, whileplayers were offered refunds as the game was removed from storefronts. Sony initially stated that it had plans to overhaul Concord for an ambigious future re-release, but those ambitions were quickly put to rest whendeveloper Firewalk Studios was shuttered.
Bungie is now the latest PlayStation studio to be embroiled in a live-service controversy, asMarathon was indefinitely delayedafter damning plagiarism accusations were brought forward.
Jump ahead nearly a year, and there’s a surprising update to this controversial live-service saga. As reported byVGC, a playable dev build called ‘FWChaos’, dated June 12, 2025, has been leaked online, showing what the game looked like a full nine months before release. Much like with the retail version, you can’t get past the login screen anymore, but since it’s a pre-release build, you can enable a dev menu to bypass this barrier.
You Can’t Really Do Much In This Version Of Concord, Either
VGC downloaded the build and tried out the pre-release version of Concord first-hand, but there’s not much to see. You can access the Galactic Guide, viewing information on each planet, and a Crew menu, detailing each of the 16 playable characters, but the Job Board only features placeholder text, and the Store expectedly offers up nothing.
However, the Settings menu does have developer options for matchmaking, so perhaps we’ll see this pre-release build used to revitalise the online scene for Concord. Though it’s hard to imagine the misjudged ‘Overwatch killer’, with a peak player count of just 697, having nearly enough enthusiasts for such a project.
The only major benefit this version of the game has is that you can actually get into the main menu, but all you can do is sift through the menus of a game nobody is able to play anymore, half of which are unfinished. It’s an oddity more than anything else: a glimpse into the development ofPlayStation’s over $200 million blunder.
