The gaming community now has a new category of failure, and none of the developers wish for their project to be placed in it. Recently, Concordlike has emerged as a term that signals a game is doomed even before it launches. But what exactly makes the games called Concordlike, and why are so many high-profile flops suddenly getting grouped under the label? The answer to the question reveals some troubling patterns about how some major studios are approaching the development of games today.
What is Concordlike, a brutal genre label?
The term Concordlike has been trending for the last few years. It didn’t exist before August 2024—when the game titled Concord was released—and is now being thrown as a curse word. It has become a shorthand for the games that failed so spectacularly that they made the industry veterans distressed.
In 2024, when Sony’s hero shooter Concord launched, it had a historic failure. As per available data, it peaked at just 697 concurrent players on Steam after 8 years of its development and a budget that, as per estimation, exceeded $200 million. The game only lasted for 14 days before it was pulled offline permanently, with developer Firewalk Studios shut down just shortly after.
Now, the gamers are using the Concordlike term, for any new multiplayer that crashes or is about to crash on arrival. But as the gamers on social media like X have pointed out, just being bad enough is not enough to earn a Concordlike label. For the term to be applicable, or rather, for a game to be Concordlike, it must check some specific boxes-
- It must feel like a corporate product that is designed by committee.
- It’s made in an attempt to copy what was successful previously—Fortnite, Destiny, Overwatch—but without understanding why these games worked.
- It’s always a live service game, and of course, it arrived years too late with nothing new offered.
This term is stuck within the gaming industry as Concord did not just fail, but it failed in a manner that exposed everything that was wrong with “how the big publishers were approaching live service games.” Concord had a big budget, talent, a better marketing machine, and yet attracted fewer players than any indie games made by single developers. So, with the news breaking that the former Concord developers are part of Highguard’s team, which also burned and crashed, the meme practically wrote itself.
Why are failed games receiving the “Concordlike” label now?
Well, here is what’s happening recently. In 2026, another game crashes, the studio announces some layoffs, and in hours, someone on X calls it Concordlike. It happened similarly with Highguard. It’s a game that launched with 100,000 concurrent players. But it soon lost 80% of them in just 2 weeks. It is also happening now with Marathon, even before its launch, despite all efforts by Bungie to win back the community sentiment. Even the Monster Hunters Gathering is receiving side-eyed looks, and it has not even been released yet.
The pattern, as per the community, is just unmistakable. All these games have a common thread, and it goes beyond failure. They are all almost chasing trends that peaked years ago. Concord’s development started as Overwatch took off, and then it arrived 8 years too late. Marathon is now entering the extraction shooter space. It’s been doing so long after Escape from Tarkov cemented dominance. In short, real gaming takes a backseat and by the time all these games start to reach players, the true window has already closed.
There are also some aesthetic issues. The ‘70s sci-fi-inspired characters of Concord weren’t offensive but were just appealing. As a critic noted, “hero shooters live and die by their characters, and these were terrible.” Highguard’s mixed fantasy knights with the modern assault rifles, in some ways, feel incoherent. When compared with Marvel Rivals or Deadlock, which carried distinct visual identities, they grabbed attention immediately. When the players cannot connect with the characters, right at first glance, they do not bother with another look.
The business models (misunderstanding about how live service games work) too cannot help here either. Concord charged $40 in the market where all major competitors remained free-to-play. Even the free-to-play games like Highguard struggled because “free” was not enough for the players who had already invested years as well as money in all those existing games they loved.
Deep issues behind the Concordlike epidemic in gaming
What makes the Concordlike phenomenon troubling is not mockery. It is what the term reveals about the economics of modern game development. All these failures share a common origin story. It is about executives sitting in boardrooms, checking market reports, and then deciding to chase what made the money in the previous year.
As per gamers, the math does not work anymore. It’s because the games now take approx. 5 to 8 years for development. But the player tastes shift faster than that. It is by the time the project reaches release that the trend it chased has already passed away. The players have already invested 100s of hours and dollars in established games. To get them to switch needs something that is genuinely revolutionary and not competent.
It creates what the industry observers called a live service graveyard. This graveyard here is the growing collection of ambitious multiplayer games that died in just months or weeks. Babylon’s Fall, Anthem, Crucible, Concord, and, potentially now, Highguard will share a similar fate. Each of them costs 10s or 100s of millions. Each comes with talented developers. Also, each of them, despite failing, could not answer one question: why should anyone actually care?
Some players have joked that Concord accidentally created new genre it never wished to be a part of. Here, a Concordlike term is not some dress to impress narrative. It serves a serious purpose. The purpose is a name pattern of the corporate decision-making which keeps producing similar expensive failures. So, until the studios stop chasing the trends of yesterday and start building games with genuine identity, the label will keep finding new recipients.
