Claim of Concord Costing $400m Results in a War of Words

Concord’s supposed $400m budget / cost of development has been the talk of the town all weekend, but the claim is being hotly debated by video game developers and journalists alike. The figure came from Sacred Symbols’ Colin Moriarty, who claims to have heard it from a source within Sony. But other Sony devs have cast doubt over it.

Concord’s reported $400m surpasses Red Dead Redemption 2, Spider-Man 2 budget

Listening to Moriarty’s clip, we hear him claim that Concord was in a messy state after ProbablyMonsters spent $200m on it, then Sony jumped in and spent another $200m to save the project. He suggests that this figure doesn’t include the cost of acquiring Firewalk Studios.

It’s possible that wires were crossed somewhere and the figure Moriarty was given isn’t the actual cost of developing Concord. For starters, $400m means the game cost more than the likes of Red Dead Redemption 2 and Spider-Man 2, which is preposterous. Secondly, we’ve only seen recent evidence of one game — Star Citizen — costing more than a few hundred million to make. Concord being up there sounds pretty ridiculous.

As pointed out by GamesIndustry’s Chris Dring, Concord — a $40 game — didn’t even have a significant marketing budget. And as pointed out by former Sony employee Del Walker, Firewalk was established only six years ago with “less than a dozen” developers. The misleading claim that Concord was in development for eight years was debunked shortly after it originated because it turned out that the game was just an idea eight years ago.

Then, there are claims that Concord’s development was heavily outsourced, which is what contributed to its cost of development. This has also been shot down because high-profile games — including Sony’s own — have more than twice the amount of outsourcing credits than Concord, and none of them cost $400m.

Finally, Kotaku’s Ethan Gach — who corroborated parts of Moriarty’s report — says that he heard a different number for Concord’s budget than Moriarty.

For some reason, the gaming community is engaged in a war of words over this report. One side is pointing out the absurdity of the $400m budget claim, while the other thinks all journalists and devs disputing Moriarty’s report have some sort of an “agenda.”

Make of this what you will.

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