I don't think free to play would have made any real difference to Concord (highguard says hi).

At the time of announcement, I was in a discord call, and I would say 9 or 10 people were interested at the cinematic trailer, when they had missed it being a multiplayer game, and they assumed it was a action RPG/ space opera.

Everyone who had any inclination of excitement, lost it immediately at the gameplay trailer.

They honestly didn't care for another multiplayer game, especially with Marvel Rivals having been played and looking better around then as well.

Alternative theory: launching a free to play game in any genre these days may as well be buying an extremely expensive lottery ticket. The top 10 charts in player numbers, not just on Steam but on any platform, are entrenched games that have been out for 10+ years and perhaps Valorant. It takes a lot of players to financially sustain a free to play game, and without the price tag, they would have only burned through money faster. When the game was free pre-release, it had already proven that there was no interest in the game. 2XKO was one of the most popular fighting games out there by player numbers, but for what it needed to make that make financial sense, it was nowhere close. Highguard was free to play and had a tremendous amount of players at launch, but it barely lasted longer than Concord.

It's a perfectly valid reason to fail, and that's because Concord was an always-online multiplayer PvP title. Games in that genre are kept alive by the players. If they can't maintain a critical mass of players to maintain the multiplayer playerbase, the game dies.

Concord entered a saturated market with nothing special to offer. Just being a good game today isn't enough. You need something special to attract players from other games; their "home" games, where they have experience, friends, competitive ranks and prestige, and probably spent money on cosmetics. If you don't have that something to raise interest, and then maintain a healthy playerbase, your multiplayer PvP game will not survive. Highguard at least had "we made Titanfall (allegedly)" to hype itself and it still ate shit once players realized they'd been handed a lemon. Compared to that, Concord has no redeeming qualities whatsoever, and players had no reason to even consider it.

Other genres have similar games in a crowded competition and still sell well, even if they are not very special different.

Other genres are different. These always-online pvp games have massive player buy-in. For something like Call of Duty, or StarCraft, there comes a point where most players will be mostly done with the game and are looking for something new. These games are constantly updating, releasing new content, and work incredibly hard to keep players locked in.

So, if you want to take market share in the newest soccer game, all you need to do is gather up the available players with something new, because they're already looking. To get market share in this genre, you need to actively pry players away from their current game.

So even if you're a bit better, you still need to beat the attachment players have to the other game, where they have a hundred levels, 62 special skins and 300 achievements. If your game is just as good, but people have no attachment, you're going to lose.

And Concord was not remotely as good.

I'm 100% sure that rule 34 of Overwatch has probably brought a solid 10% of its playerbase in. Gooners are not to be underestimated.

My pet theory on why Betamax and HD-DVD failed is in small part because porn was more difficult to put on them compared to VHS and Bluray respectively.

I remember a while ago, they changed the butt on one of the characters and it was an active controversy in gaming social media for a time.

It was the orange one and it was a pose change, apparently, not a model change, and it was over a decade ago 😕

Why do I remember this and not the countless things I have forgotten since then? IDK. People have strong feelings about butts.