The main events over the weekend (September 21-22)

According to media reports, the development of Concord cost $400 million, IGN uncovered the reasons behind the departure of the entire Annapurna Interactive team, and the number of concurrent Steam users exceeded 38 million for the first time — here’s what happened in the gaming industry over the weekend.

MENACE

• Former IGN editor Colin Moriarty, in his podcast Sacred Symbols: A PlayStation Podcast, claimed that the failed shooter Concord cost $400 million to develop. According to him, Sony viewed the game as "the future of PlayStation" with potential comparable to the "Star Wars" franchise. However, the development of Concord reportedly occurred in an atmosphere of so-called toxic positivity, where criticism of the project was simply ignored. It's worth noting that several gaming journalists advised skepticism regarding Moriarty’s claims about Concord's enormous budget. In particular, his information was criticized by Tom Warren from The Verge and Christopher Dring from GamesIndustry.
• IGN spoke with its sources and published an extensive piece exploring why all employees recently resigned from Annapurna Interactive. In short: the reason was disagreements with the parent company’s leadership (Annapurna Pictures). It is reported that the situation unraveled at the publisher in March 2024, sparked by a decision from Annapurna Pictures founder Megan Ellison to focus more on business. James Masi, the chief administrative manager, was suddenly fired, and Nathan Gary, the president of Annapurna Pictures, was transferred to head Annapurna Interactive but soon left the company too. The firings of Masi and Gary caused employee dissatisfaction, prompting Ellison to reinstate former workers and negotiate with Gary to launch another gaming division. It was anticipated that in the upcoming months, Gary and his team would move to a new Annapurna Pictures-owned company named Verset, handling all existing Annapurna Interactive projects. By early summer, Hector Sanchez, a co-founder of the publisher who left in 2019, had discreetly returned to Annapurna Interactive — purportedly placed in charge of games by Ellison without informing other employees. He was responsible for a deal with Remedy Entertainment, which Annapurna Interactive employees learned about only on the announcement day. Sanchez was expected to eventually lead work on AA and AAA games as well as transmedia projects while Verset would focus on indie titles. In recent months, Ellison became increasingly involved in Annapurna Interactive's deals, projects, and budgets, which displeased many in the team. By August, negotiations to create Verset stalled and were discontinued, leading to the departure of the Annapurna Interactive team from the company.
• In a conversation with Game Developer, KRAFTON CEO Changhan Kim stated that The Callisto Protocol underperformed expectations due to its unoriginal gameplay. In his opinion, KRAFTON should have allowed The Callisto Protocol's creators to experiment more during the early development stages, which could have led to a different outcome. No matter how polished a project is externally, achieving success without innovation is challenging, Kim admitted.
• Steam continues to set online records. On the evening of September 22, the number of concurrent users on the platform reached 38.36 million for the first time ever. Of those, 12.27 million were actively playing games at that moment.
• Publisher Hooded Horse announced that over 250,000 people have added the futuristic turn-based tactical game MENACE to their wishlist. MENACE is being developed by Overhype Studios, known for the game Battle Brothers. The project is expected to release by the end of the year on PC.