It’s easy to see that LawBreakers from Boss Key Productions is one of this generation’s biggest failures. That’s not easy for its former studio head, Cliff Bleszinski (CliffyB), to hear. Despite his efforts to jump into the competitive game market, LawBreakers just came up short. As a result, the servers shut down just a year later, alongside the studio. This gave Bleszinksi something to reflect upon in a recent Instagram post, in which he noted his reasoning for its failure.
Blame the “woke bro,” among other factors
Bleszinski notes he’s been “wracking my brain” in regards to what he could’ve done differently with LawBreakers. He believes that his “own personal political beliefs” could have played a part, contrasting with a “world that was increasingly divided.”
He went into more detail about this further on in the post: “Instead of the story being ‘this game looks neat’ it became ‘this is the game with the ‘woke bro’ trying to push his hackey politics on us with gender neutral bathrooms.’ Instead of ‘these characters seem fun’ it was ‘this is the studio with the CEO who refuses to make his female characters sexier.’ Instead of ‘who am I going to choose’ it became ‘white dude shoehorns diversity in his game and then smells his own smug farts in interviews’ instead of just letting the product … speak for itself.”
In a subsequent update to the original Instagram post though, Bleszinski elaborated a bit on his original message: “In case I didn’t make it clear I mean that this was *A* factor, not THE. Marketing, timing, being on ps over xbox, and more were also factors” in the game’s failure.
There are several signs as to why LawBreakers failed. Its multiplayer-only content, priced at $29.99, made it a little hard to invest in — especially when compared to free-to-play games. On top of that, its gate of entry was too high for beginner players to enter, since LawBreakers catered more to pros. And by the time it got exciting new content, it was too little, too late. (Not to mention Bleszinski being less than kind to gaming media, with the words “f**k off” heard loud and clear.)
Following a meager attempt to enter the battle royale arena with Radical Heights, Boss Key Productions closed its doors. Bleszinski is reportedly working on a Broadway show at the moment, after previously swearing off to making video games “forever.”
