Sony shuts down Harmony developer Firewalk, completely cancels recreation

Harmony developer Firewalk Studios has been closed by Sony Interactive Leisure, in line with an inner e mail from CEO Hermen Hulst. The failed shooter has been completely sundown, Hulst confirmed, and won’t return.

“After a lot thought, we’ve decided the very best path ahead is to completely sundown the sport and shut the studio,” Hulst mentioned within the e mail to workers on Tuesday. “I need to thank all of Firewalk for his or her craftsmanship, inventive spirit and dedication.”

Hulst defined that after taking Harmony offline in September, SIE “spent appreciable time these previous few months exploring all our choices” for the shooter. “The PvP first-person shooter style is a aggressive area that’s constantly evolving, and sadly, we didn’t hit our targets with this title,” he mentioned. “We are going to take the teachings discovered from Harmony and proceed to advance our live-service capabilities to ship future progress on this space.”

In an announcement on X (previously Twitter), Firewalk Studios wrote that it was “signing off one final time.”

“We took some dangers alongside the best way – marrying points of card battlers and preventing video games with first-person-shooters – and though a few of these and different points of the IP didn’t land as we hoped, the concept of placing new issues into the world is essential to pushing the medium ahead,” the studio mentioned. “The expertise at Firewalk and the extent of particular person craft is really world-class, and groups inside Sony Interactive Leisure and throughout the trade will likely be lucky to work with them. […] Thanks to all of the very many groups, companions and followers who supported us alongside the best way.“

Along with Firewalk Studios, Hulst introduced that one other Sony-owned studio, Neon Koi, will shut. Helsinki-based Neon Koi, which was beforehand named Savage Video games and was acquired by Sony in 2022, was creating a cellular motion recreation for PlayStation. The closure of each studios will end in 210 folks dropping their jobs, Bloomberg reported.

Harmony was initially launched in late August for PlayStation 5 and Home windows PC, then pulled from sale and brought offline on Sept. 6. On the time, Harmony recreation director Ryan Ellis mentioned that the studio deliberate to “discover choices, together with these that can higher attain our gamers,” whereas it “decide[d] the very best path forward” for the sport.

Harmony garnered headlines for its low participant depend on Steam at launch. In response to a report from IGN, analysts estimated that opening week gross sales have been uncharacteristically poor for a first-party recreation printed by Sony — solely about 25,000 copies of Harmony have been believed to have been offered. Amid unhealthy press and reducing participant counts, Sony and Firewalk shortly pulled the plug. Harmony went offline two weeks after launch. Clients who had bought the sport have been refunded.

Earlier than Tuesday’s announcement, Sony and Firewalk’s plans for Harmony’s future appeared open-ended, resulting in hypothesis that the sport may very well be re-released as a free-to-play recreation — Harmony price $39.99 — or as a part of Sony’s PlayStation Plus subscription.

Firewalk Studios was based in 2018 as a part of the ProbablyMonsters recreation studio collective based by Harold Ryan. Sony and ProbablyMonsters introduced a publishing deal for Firewalk’s debut recreation in 2021. In April 2023, Sony introduced it deliberate to amass Firewalk from ProbablyMonsters.