Foamstar's fate shows why returning to Concord for free would be risky

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There's no way around it: Sony's Harmony is one of the biggest AAA flops in recent years. The live-service team shooter, while widely appreciated from a technical standpoint, gained almost no traction with the gaming public, slipping well into obscurity and ultimately being canceled by Sony just two weeks after launch.




Harmony is a fascinating failure, not only because its weak points aren't among the usual suspects—poor performance, outrageous in-game spending, excessive bugs—but also because of the speed with which it was abandoned. In recent years, one would almost expect a big-budget live service to stumble in its early days and slowly gain renewed interest as new content, bug fixes, and quality-of-life improvements creep into the core product. However, this kind of post-launch distortion seems to become less effective over the years, and even more dramatic changes have proven far less successful in changing public opinion about certain titles. A good example of this would be Square Enix Foamstarsa Splatoon derivative that struggled to gain a strong fan base at its premium price, leading to a shift to the free-to-play model. But this didn't move the needle too much, and the same strategy may prove equally ineffective for Concord.


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Foamstar's lack of success playing free may foreshadow Concord's

A Free-to-Play Switch for Concord has been rumored

Fortnite, War zone, Genshin Impact: three of the most popular and influential games of the modern era, and they're all free to play. The success of such titles is of course not a sign that free-to-play is the way to go for every game out there, but they do represent the power of the low-risk, high-reward dynamic that characterizes the GaaS model. Of course, it's a model many companies want to capitalize on, although some publishers are trying to recreate the same addictive live-service gameplay loop while charging a premium price for the base product, usually along with countless in-game purchases. This can be seen as one of the reasons Foamstars failed.


But even removing that premium price tag did little to help Square's woes Splatoon clone, which has suffered from a consistently declining player base even after becoming a freebie. Rumors have surfaced about it Harmony could follow Square Enix's lead here, reentering the fray as a free-to-play title in an attempt to recoup some of its losses. Assuming this is true, then it may follow Foamstars' legacy in more ways than one, takes the plunge into open waters only to drown again.

Concord's problems go beyond the price tag

Harmony is a game that screams “free to play” at first glance, so the $40 price tag could certainly have contributed to its weaknesses, but that's far from the only thing wrong with it. Really, HarmonyThe number of players at the bottom can be attributed to a number of factors, but most of them focus on a specific pain point: lack of soul, identity and charm.


Take a game like Monitoringwhich Harmony obviously takes a lot of inspiration from. Monitoring is defined by its unforgettable character design, storytelling and varied gameplay, all of which combine to give it a certain verve. Despite being made by a billion-dollar company, it manages to feel snappy, sprightly and alluring – qualities that inevitably corporate feel Harmony missing

There is also the more general problem of market saturation. Competitive gaming for live services is everywhere, and it's getting harder and harder for new releases to stand out in this space. This is to say nothing of the GaaS model itself, which is defined by a constant demand on players' time, and time is the crucial finite resource. The truth is that many players never felt it Harmony was worth its time, making its comeback unlikely, $0 price tag or not.

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