Concord couldn’t survive its disastrous launch in 2024, but a small group of dedicated fans wasn’t ready to let it die. They spent months reverse engineering the game’s backend and building custom servers to bring it back online. For a brief moment in November 2025, Concord was playable again. Then Sony’s lawyers showed up to kill it a second time, because nothing says ‘customer-focused company’ like crushing a fan project for a game you already abandoned.
The Game That Died in Two Weeks
Let’s start with what happened to Concord in the first place. The hero shooter launched on August 23, 2024, as one of Sony’s big live-service pushes. It was dead by September 6, lasting exactly two weeks before Sony pulled the plug, shut down the servers, and issued full refunds. According to reports, the game sold fewer than 25,000 copies and peaked at just 697 concurrent players on Steam. That’s catastrophically bad for a game Sony reportedly spent eight years and over $200 million developing.
By October 29, 2024, Sony officially closed Firewalk Studios, the developer behind Concord, eliminating approximately 210 jobs. PlayStation Studios head Hermen Hulst acknowledged that while certain aspects of Concord were outstanding, the game didn’t resonate with enough players. The entire project was permanently retired, or so everyone thought.
The Fans Who Wouldn’t Let It Die
A small team of developers – primarily Red, open_wizard, and gwog – decided to bring Concord back from the dead. They spent months working on the project in the Concord Delta Discord community. Open_wizard rebuilt the entire backend API from scratch. Red handled most of the reverse engineering work to figure out how Concord’s systems functioned. Gwog jumped in to fix several high-level issues that cropped up during development.
By November 13, 2025, they had it working. The custom servers could boot the main menu, load characters, match players, and run full Clash Point matches. It was buggy and incomplete, but it worked. For the first time since Sony shut everything down over a year ago, you could actually play Concord. The team posted two YouTube videos showing the game running on their recreated servers.
Sony Responded With Legal Threats
Within hours of the custom server videos gaining attention, Sony’s enforcers struck. The two main YouTube videos showcasing Concord running on custom servers were hit with DMCA takedowns issued by MarkScan, a digital asset protection firm that handles copyright enforcement for Sony. The videos were removed from YouTube entirely.
Red posted an update in the Concord Delta Discord on November 14: “Due to worrying legal action we’ve decided to pause invites for the time being.” The team clarified that they haven’t received a direct DMCA notice targeting the custom server project itself. So far, all enforcement action has focused exclusively on YouTube gameplay videos, not the actual code or development work.
The Lawyers Watching Everything
The custom server team was already walking on eggshells before the takedowns. Red made it clear from the start that piracy wouldn’t be tolerated and that the developers wouldn’t provide Concord game files to anyone who didn’t already own the game. “I know this sucks for people who got forcefully refunded, but lawyers are most likely already watching everything we do and I want to ensure this project stays as legal as we realistically can do,” Red wrote in the Discord. “We will be removing any posts containing links to copyrighted files.”
That’s a level of caution you don’t normally see in fan projects, and it suggests the team understood exactly how precarious their position was. Despite those precautions, Sony still came after them the moment they went public.
MarkScan Has a Terrible Track Record
If MarkScan’s name sounds familiar, it’s because they’ve been Sony’s attack dog for years, and their reputation is absolutely terrible. According to Google’s transparency report, MarkScan submits millions of URL takedown requests on behalf of Sony, Amazon, Netflix, and other major companies. Here’s the embarrassing part – Google only removes content for about 47 percent of those requests. That means more than half of MarkScan’s takedown demands are rejected as invalid or inaccurate.
MarkScan has previously targeted Bloodborne fan projects, including a demake created by developer Lilith Walther. In that case, MarkScan didn’t reach out directly to Walther. They just issued takedowns of her project page and YouTube videos without warning. This is standard operating procedure for MarkScan – fire off as many DMCA notices as possible, accuracy be damned, and let the targets deal with the fallout.
Why This Makes Sony Look Ridiculous
Let’s be clear about what Sony is protecting here. Concord is dead. Sony killed it themselves. The game is not coming back. Firewalk Studios is closed. There’s no revenue being generated, no player base to protect, and no commercial value left to preserve. The custom server project wasn’t competing with an active product. It was preserving a defunct one that Sony had already written off as a total loss.
The fan team was so careful to stay legal that they refused to provide game files to people who got refunds. Only players who still owned legitimate copies could access the custom servers. This wasn’t piracy. It wasn’t commercial exploitation. It was a handful of dedicated fans trying to salvage something from one of gaming’s biggest disasters.
Game Preservation Matters
This situation highlights a massive problem with modern live-service games. When a publisher decides to shut down the servers, the game ceases to exist. You can’t play it offline. You can’t preserve it. It’s just gone, even if you paid full price for it. Custom server projects are one of the few ways to prevent this total loss of gaming history.
Sony could have ignored the Concord custom servers. They could have tacitly allowed the project to continue as an unofficial preservation effort. Instead, they chose to flex their legal muscles against a tiny team of hobbyists working on a game Sony themselves abandoned. That’s a choice that says a lot about corporate priorities.
What Happens Next
As of now, the custom server project is on pause, not dead. The team hasn’t received direct legal action against the servers themselves, only the YouTube videos. That suggests Sony might not want to go through the hassle of actually suing these developers. DMCA takedowns are easy. Actual lawsuits are expensive and generate bad publicity.
It’s possible the project continues quietly without public videos or announcements. It’s also possible Sony escalates and sends cease-and-desist letters directly to the developers. Or maybe, just maybe, Sony realizes how bad this looks and decides to let a handful of people play a dead game in peace. Don’t hold your breath on that last one.
FAQs
What happened to Concord?
Concord launched on August 23, 2024, and was shut down on September 6, 2024, after just two weeks. The game sold fewer than 25,000 copies and peaked at 697 concurrent players on Steam. Sony issued full refunds and permanently closed developer Firewalk Studios on October 29, 2024.
Who created the Concord custom servers?
A small team of developers – primarily Red, open_wizard, and gwog – spent months reverse engineering Concord’s backend systems and rebuilding custom servers. They successfully got the game running in November 2025, allowing full matches for the first time since Sony’s shutdown.
Why did Sony issue DMCA takedowns?
Sony, through enforcement firm MarkScan, issued DMCA takedowns on YouTube videos showing Concord running on custom servers. The takedowns targeted gameplay footage, not the server project itself, though the developers paused invites due to legal concerns.
What is MarkScan?
MarkScan is a digital asset protection firm that handles copyright enforcement for major companies including Sony. According to Google’s transparency report, more than half of MarkScan’s takedown requests are rejected, indicating a very aggressive and often inaccurate enforcement approach.
Are the custom servers illegal?
That’s complicated. The developers only allow access to players who own legitimate copies of Concord and refuse to distribute game files. Reverse engineering for interoperability can fall under fair use, but Sony’s intellectual property rights make the legal situation uncertain.
Can you still play Concord on custom servers?
The project is currently paused due to legal concerns. The developers haven’t received direct legal action against the servers themselves, but they stopped sending invites after the YouTube takedowns. The future of the project is uncertain.
How much did Concord cost Sony?
Reports suggest Sony spent over $200 million and eight years developing Concord. The game’s catastrophic failure led to the closure of Firewalk Studios and the loss of approximately 210 jobs.
Conclusion
Sony spent hundreds of millions of dollars creating Concord, shut it down after two weeks, closed the studio, eliminated over 200 jobs, and then decided the real threat was a handful of fans trying to preserve the game on custom servers. The DMCA takedowns against YouTube videos of a dead game nobody wanted to play anyway accomplish nothing except making Sony look petty and hostile to game preservation. MarkScan’s involvement adds another layer of absurdity, given their track record of inaccurate takedown requests that get rejected more than half the time. The custom server team did everything possible to stay legal and respectful of Sony’s IP, and they still got hit with legal threats. If this is how Sony treats dedicated fans trying to salvage something from one of gaming’s biggest disasters, it’s hard to imagine why anyone would trust them with live-service games in the future.