Sony’s $40 Hero Shooter Concord Does Not Have a Battle Pass [IGN]

Concord, Sony’s $40 hero shooter set to launch on PlayStation 5 and PC in August, does not have a battle pass.

Sony-owned developer Firewalk Studios took to social media to answer questions coming out of the recent closed and open betas, and confirmed Concord bucks the live service trend by ditching a battle pass in favor of an old-school unlock system fueled simply by playing the game, completing objectives, and leveling up.

“Concord does not have a battle pass,” Firewalk said. “We wanted to focus our attention on making Concord a rewarding and robust experience on day one, where just playing the game, leveling up your accounts and characters, and completing jobs yields meaningful rewards.”

Firewalk Studios gameplay animation director, Mark DeRidder, followed up by tweeting: “No Battle Pass, folks. You own Concord, Concord doesn’t own you.”

Concord is set to enter the tough live service hero shooter market, taking on established players such as Blizzard’s Overwatch 2, EA’s Apex Legends, and Riot’s Valorant by charging $40 all-in, rather than go free-to-play with microtransactions and battle passes, as its competitors do.

The game’s chances of success are a hot topic online, with recent poor concurrent player numbers on Steam for the closed and open beta fueling the sense that Concord will likely struggle on PC. Concord may fare better on PS5 (Sony does not make PlayStation player numbers public), but tough questions will surely continue around whether the game hits Sony’s commercial expectations for it.

Sony has found enormous success going down the PS5/PC cross-platform route for fellow PlayStation live service, Helldivers 2. Arrowhead’s third-person co-op shooter, which also launched at $40, is PlayStation’s fastest-selling game of all time with over 12 million sold in 12 weeks. Early indicators suggest Concord will struggle to emulate its live service predecessor’s sales success.

Meanwhile, Firewalk confirmed Concord does not have a PvE mode at launch, although pointed to the addition of new modes in the future. Concord launches with the six 5v5 PvP modes seen in the beta, alongside 12 maps and hundreds of customization items to unlock.

The idea is Firewalk will release new characters, maps, and plenty more as part of regular post-launch seasons. Cinematic vignettes will be released weekly in-game at launch (three we shown during the beta). These let you get to know the characters and learn about life as a Freegunner and the broader Concord galaxy.

One big problem the beta suffered from was no mid-match leaver penalty, and no join-in-progress system. That meant players would be faced with playing as part of an under strength team, or against a team short on numbers, which would encourage more players to leave.

Firewalk said “ensuring teams are complete and evenly matched throughout a game is a priority for us,” and confirmed plans to explore the potential of a leaver penalty system “to incentivize players to start and stay in complete teams,” but it doesn’t sound like it will be in place for launch.

And finally, at launch, Concord will have its training mode and Galactic Guide unlocked.

Wesley is the UK News Editor for IGN. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. You can reach Wesley at wesley_yinpoole@ign.com or confidentially at wyp100@proton.me.