Sony Moves Against Concord Community Project With DMCA Strikes on Gameplay Clips
- Sagar Mankar
- 2 days ago
- 2 min read
Sony has taken down YouTube videos showing Concord running on fan-made custom servers.
Concord’s story has been rocky from day one. The game launched in August 2024 as part of Sony’s big live-service push, but it never managed to build a stable audience. Within just a few weeks, servers went offline, refunds went out, and Firewalk Studios, the team behind the project, closed its doors. For many players, that felt like the end of Concord. But as we’ve seen this week, some fans weren’t ready to let it go.
Yesterday, the situation shifted when a group of developers successfully brought Concord back online using custom servers. They spent months reverse engineering systems, rebuilding backend APIs, and testing matchmaking until it finally worked. For the first time since Sony shut everything down, you could actually see the game boot up, load characters, match players, and run a full Clash Point match.
But the excitement didn’t last long. Soon after the revival gained traction, the two main YouTube videos showcasing the custom server gameplay were hit with DMCA takedowns. According to TheGamePost, these notices were issued by MarkScan, the same digital asset protection firm that has handled many of Sony’s copyright enforcement actions over the years. MarkScan has previously been linked to removals involving Sony Music, various television footage claims, and even fan projects like the Bloodborne demake, so the pattern here feels very familiar.
This time, though, the takedowns are targeting only the YouTube uploads, not the custom server project itself. Red, one of the key developers behind the revival, confirmed in the Concord Delta Discord that the team hasn’t received any direct DMCA notices from Sony or MarkScan regarding their code or development work. However, they are taking precautions. “Due to worrying legal action, we’ve decided to pause invites for the time being,” Red said in a brief update.
The revival effort itself is pretty impressive. A small team, mainly Red, open_wizard, and gwog, has spent months rebuilding Concord’s backend from scratch. As per earlier updates shared in their Discord, open_wizard reconstructed the game’s entire backend API, while Red handled most of the reverse-engineering work. Meanwhile, gwog jumped in to help fix several high-level issues tied to Concord’s systems. The group eventually got everything working: main menu, character loading, matchmaking, and full matches.
They even uploaded two videos showing Concord fully running on their recreated servers, though those videos are now the ones Sony struck down. The team describes the build as “playable but buggy,” and they were preparing for private playtests before the DMCA situation interrupted their plans.