Concord, the upcoming 5v5 hero shooter from Sony’s Firewalk Studios, is bucking the battle pass trend, with its developer telling players, “You own Concord, Concord doesn’t own you.”
Firewalk Studios announced the news in a series of posts on social media, explaining Concord won’t have a battle pass because it “wanted to focus [its] attention on making Concord a rewarding and robust experience on day one, where just playing the game, levelling up your accounts and characters, and completing jobs yields meaningful rewards.”
In a seperate post, Concord gameplay animation director Mark DeRidder wrote, “No Battle Pass, folks. You own Concord, Concord doesn’t own you.”
It’s certainly an increasingly unusual, if not unwelcome, choice in a world where it feels like every major live-service game – including the Sony published Helldivers 2 – comes with a time-sucking seasonal battle pass (or two). Firewalk has, however, previously confirmed the £35/$40 game will be further monetised via cosmetic character customisation items.
Elsewhere in today’s posts, the studio noted Concord will include additional cinematics beyond those featured in its recent open beta, and will receive new Freegunners (as its heroes are known), maps, modes, and more in regular post-launch seasons and updates. These will be made available to all players at no additional cost.
Firewalk also confirmed Concord will including single-player training modes at launch (but no solo-specific play modes), alongside six “distinct” 5v5 team-based modes, and “multiple” unlockable variants for each of its 16 heroes.
Concord launches for PlayStation 5 and PC via Steam and Epic on 23rd August. Eurogamer’s Chris Tapsell recently took a look at the 5v5 shooter, declaring it good. “The bad news,” he continued, “is I can’t figure out how good, just yet… Each element done in absolutely the right way, but not necessarily in service of anything more than simply doing things the right way… My fingers are crossed for this one being given enough time to find its identity on the fly.”