Sony Issues DMCA Takedowns Against Fan Effort to Revive Canceled Game ‘Concord‘
Sony Interactive entertainment is pursuing DMCA takedowns against a group of fans attempting to create custom servers for Concord, a team-based shooter teh company abruptly canceled just two weeks after its release in 2024. The move comes despite Sony shutting down the game, refunding purchases, and dissolving the advancement studio, Radius Studio, responsible for its creation.
the fan project, dubbed “Concord Delta,” aimed to restore online play for the game after official servers were shuttered. Developers reverse-engineered aspects of Concord to facilitate the creation of private servers, intending to allow players to continue enjoying the game. Though, Sony, through its long-time IP enforcement partner MarkScan, began issuing DMCA takedown notices targeting gameplay videos associated with the fan-made servers.
“There are a billion gameplay videos of Sony games that are actually active and out in the world, but these get taken down?” questioned TechDirt in a report on the situation.
While Sony hasn’t directly contacted the Concord Delta team, the legal pressure has prompted them to temporarily halt invitations to their discord server, according to reporting by The Game Post. “Due to worrying legal action we’ve decided to pause invites… for the time being,” wrote a member of the Concord Delta team on the Discord server.
The situation has drawn criticism, especially when contrasted with Nintendo’s approach to fan-led preservation efforts like The Pretendo Network and WiiLink, which restore online functionality for older Nintendo consoles without facing legal challenges.
“When you manage to make Nintendo look relatively fan-friendly, it should be obvious you’ve done something horribly wrong,” TechDirt observed. Concord officially launched in 2024 but was discontinued shortly after, with Sony offering refunds to all purchasers. The current actions suggest Sony is not onyl unwilling to support the game officially but actively seeks to prevent fans from doing so independently.
