In a move that’s sure to engender some good will for the widely-panned hero shooter, a former Firewalk Studios dev who worked on Concord has written off the game’s numerous critics as nothing more than “talentless freaks”.
This PR misstep for the already embattled title came courtesy of one Xander Farrell, a now-former Firewalk Studios member who worked on Concord as a view model animator (in other words, the animations undertaken by the player character’s model when in first-person view).
Admittedly, things started off innocently enough, with Farrell, who uses they/them pronouns, taking to their Twitter on August 23rd to congratulate the Concord team on the release of their title.
“It’s Concord release day!” beamed the animator. “So insanely proud of the team and what they (and we) have accomplished. A labour of love like nothing else. Been playing it so much since early access started a few days ago, and I’m so excited for it to be available to everyone.”
“And I’m so honoured to have had this be my first AAA game. was a huge learning experience, lots of struggles but I’m glad to have gone through them,” they added. “Time to go play!”
Unfortunately, from there, things took a sharp turn to disaster.
In response to Farrell’s posts, Twitter user @Preston55272266 attempted to offer the animator their genuine condolences for Concord‘s abysmal reception, telling them, “I’m so sorry this has to be your first. I do not believe it is you, or any of the other devs fault that this game has performed so poorly. I can tell that a lot of effort was put into completing this game, it just came at the wrong time and genre.”
But rather than thanking them for their message, liking their post, or simply acknowledging their post in private, Farrell instead offered the now-deleted reply, “Eh. I don’t really care. It was a huge labour from a lot of insanely talent people making an awesome game. Why would I care about a bunch of talentless freaks hating on it?”
“I’m sure having fun playing it,” the animator concluded. “And I wouldn’t trade it for anything.”
To further compound matters for the Concord team, despite Farrell’s assertion, it seems the game absolutely needs the interest of some of those “talentless freaks” in order to survive.
At current, per info provided by Steam analytics outlet Steam DB, the game has only managed to draw in a peak player count of just 679 in the roughly 24 hours since its release.
To that end, for anyone masochistic enough to want endure a game whose gameplay and writing are both outdated by about a decade, Concord is now available on the PlayStation 5 and PC platforms.
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