players Are Reverse-Engineering Concord to Bring the Short-Lived Shooter Back to life

Concord, a shooter from Sony Interactive Entertainment and Firewalk Studios similar to Overwatch, was live for just two weeks before it was pulled offline. Though Concord certainly had some dedicated players, it didn’t have manny-wich is why it might potentially be surprising to hear that a group of players are reverse-engineering the game and its servers to bring it back to life.

publisher Sony removed Concord from stores and digital marketplaces, automatically refunded some, and later shut down firewalk Studios. Two hundred people were laid off,and any hopes of Concord‘s return were dashed.Poor sales-estimated to be under 25,000 copies sold-and low player numbers marred the release. Firewalk Studios’ game director Ryan Ellis said in a blog post that pieces of the game “resonated with players,” but “other aspects of the game and[[Concord‘s]initial launch didn’t land the way[[Firewalk Studios]intended.”

Concord wasn’t a bad game, but it just didn’t generate enough interest with enough players. Now, a group of three hobbyist reverse-engineers, who go by real, Red, and gwog online, are trying to make it playable again. They explained the process to Aftermath in an interview over Discord.

“I just like the virtual equivalent of taking things apart and putting them together,” gwog said.

The group got a build of Concord running this week and posted a video of the match on youtube. Red, who led a project to bring LawBreakers back online, said it was the first time he’d played Concord. When Red heard the game had died, he sought it out.

“I pretty much always do this when games die,” he said. “There’s also part of it that is due to the technical challenge that Concord brings with it, it’s probably the most complex project I’ve worked on so far, and that really motivated me to keep going.”

Red said there are two ways to reverse engineer a game like this and have it run o