Harmony developer Firewalk Studios has been closed by Sony Interactive Leisure, in line with an inner electronic mail from CEO Hermen Hulst. The failed shooter has been completely sundown, Hulst confirmed, and won’t return.
“After a lot thought, we now have decided one of the best path ahead is to completely sundown the sport and shut the studio,” Hulst stated within the electronic 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 house that’s constantly evolving, and sadly, we didn’t hit our targets with this title,” he stated. “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.”
Along with Firewalk Studios, Hulst introduced that one other Sony-owned studio, Neon Koi, will shut. Helsinki-based Neon Koi, which was beforehand known as Savage Video games and was acquired by Sony in 2022, was creating a cell motion recreation for PlayStation when it was shut down on Tuesday.
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 stated that the studio deliberate to “discover choices, together with these that can higher attain our gamers,” whereas it “decide[d] one of the 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 estimated to have been offered. Amid dangerous press and lowering participant counts, Sony and Firewalk rapidly 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.
