Two years after its release, the legacy of Firewalk Studios’ 2024 hero shooter Concord is not, as the developers probably hoped, as a premium and well-liked alternative to Overwatch and Valorant. It is, instead, a yardstick against which live-service game failure is measured.
ARC Team and PUBG Studios announced on Thursday that PUBG: Blindspot, their top-down 5v5 tactical shooter, will shut down on March 30. It will have lasted 40 days longer than Concord‘s dismal 14-day run, barely hanging on longer Highguard, this month’s other high-profile live-service failure, which lasted only 31 days longer than Concord before shutting down.
PUBG: Blindspot launched in early access on February 4. According to a press release from publisher and PUBG Studios owner Krafton, the goal of the early access release was for “…the development team [to] actively work…alongside players to refine gameplay systems and expand content ahead of full release. Player feedback will play a central role, with frequent updates planned to improve depth, balance, and overall quality.” And while the team did an admirable job with that goal, releasing regular patches in response to player feedback as promised, it seems there just weren’t enough players for the game to succeed. One of the biggest complaints in PUBG: Blindspot’s Steam user reviews was long wait times for matches due to its consistently low number of concurrent players.
In the post announcing the game’s closure, ARC Team’s Sequoia Yang wrote, “…after careful consideration, we have come to the conclusion that we are no longer able to sustainably provide the level of experience we set out to deliver through Early Access. We place player experience at the center of every decision we make, and it is based on that principle that we have made this decision.”
This comes amid Krafton’s ghoulish goal of becoming an “AI-first” gaming company with a $69 billion investment in the technology. A judge also recently ordered Krafton to reinstate Subnautica 2 studio head Ted Gill after he found the company improperly fired Gill in 2025. Clearly, things are going super well over there.