Firewalk Studios, the developer behind PlayStation live-service hero shooter Concord, has apparently lost its lead director in the wake of the game’s disastrous launch.
Kotaku’s Ethan Gach reports that game director Ryan Ellis told staff last week that he would be stepping down from the role and moving into a more support position, according to multiple sources.
Ellis has been the face of the studio, and his name has been on all the statements PlayStation put out about the game, including the one that announced the shooter was going offline after just two weeks. It was also removed from online stores, and refunds were issued across all platforms.
“While many qualities of the experience resonated with players, we also recognize that other aspects of the game and our initial launch didn’t land the way we’d intended,” the statement reads.
“Ryan deeply believed in that project and bringing players together through the joy in it,” one ex-developer told Kotaku. “Regardless of there being things that could have been done differently throughout development… he’s a good human, and full of heart.”
The sources further claim that the rest of the team is waiting to hear about their fate in the wake of Concord being taken offline to “explore options” that could help it hit better with players. While it’s possible the game could come back, many said they were skeptical, and are cleaning up their resumes and portfolios.
“Some have been asked to explore pitches for something completely different that Firewalk, which is currently around 150-170 employees, might work on next,” Gach wrote.
However, Gach further confirmed on X (formerly Twitter) Friday that the company suffered from a “head in the sand mentality” and “toxic positivity,” something that fellow Sony Interactive Entertainment studio Bungie reportedly had issues with in the leadup to a massive restructuring in August.
Concord is one of the most staggering video game failures in recent memory. After launching on PlayStation 5 and PC August 20, it struggled to pick up players. Around a week later, it was pulling in less than 700 concurrent players on Steam, and, according to analyst Simon Carless, it had sold around 25,000 units total. This was after around eight years of development. It was taken offline on September 6.
The Call of Duty franchise has held a special place in my heart ever since I played my first Black Ops game back in 2010. That game's campaign was something else, with twists and turns that culminated in a mind-blowing finale. We can all admit that compared to those older campaigns, the recent CODs have been lackluster at best, and a complete and utter disappointment at worst. The reboot of Modern Warfare did give me some hope, as the first two installments were actually quite good, but the third game left such a bad taste in my mouth that I wasn’t exactly expecting much from Modern Warfare 4.
After recently finishing the campaign, I can say that this installment is nothing like the recent releases and instead feels closer to the franchise’s roots. For the first time in a long while, the campaign comes across as well-crafted rather than rushed to hit a release date. It arrives three years after MW3, and you can see exactly where all that time went. It seems the studio finally made listening to player feedback a priority.
Epic Games has just announced the 2026 Epic AI MegaJam, which is looking to see how much game development can be squeezed into a very short window. This is running from November 12 through November 15.
Participants can work alone or in teams of up to five people, build in Unreal Engine or Unreal Editor for Fortnite, and bring along “as many AI agents as you want.” Epic explicitly encourages coding agents, AI-generated assets, audio tools, writing tools, and other AI systems. The official event page literally says "Vibe your way to $50k.”
It’s turning into a pretty good time to be a Monster Hunter fan who plays on a phone. Capcom has confirmed that Monster Hunter Outlanders will launch on Android and iOS on October 29, giving the series a new mobile-first game just as Monster Hunter Rise is also preparing to make the jump to smartphones through Netflix.
Outlanders is being developed by Tencent subsidiary TiMi Studio Group under license and supervision from Capcom. Unlike Rise, which appears to be the full console and PC game adapted for mobile, Outlanders is a free-to-play survival hunting game made specifically for phones.