LawBreakers, the hero shooter developed by Cliff Bleszinski’s Boss Key Productions, is a kind of unlucky video games that solely ever makes headlines these days when one thing dangerous happens, and as soon as once more it has, this time because of the recreation’s writer, Nexon, declaring the sport a failure and blaming its poor fortunes on PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds.
This declaration got here following the writer’s newest monetary report which revealed a deficit of $32.6 million, which was purported to be primarily stuffed by LawBreakers.
As one would possibly anticipate, traders weren’t all too thrilled by this efficiency and sought solutions.
Right here is the reply they obtained, per Nexon Chief Monetary Officer Shiro Uemura:
“Our ends in North America within the third quarter had been beneath our outlook, primarily because of the gross sales from LawBreakers being beneath our expectations.”
“LawBreakers is a singular FPS developed for core customers. We had very excessive expectations for its launch. Nonetheless, the timing of its launch turned out to be unlucky, particularly the blockbuster PC on-line recreation PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds got here out proper about the identical time, making the market atmosphere very powerful for first-person shooters normally and for LawBreakers.”
So, as Nexon’s argument goes, the explanation why LawBreakers failed is due to PUBG. Nonetheless, when trying on the recreation’s historical past, it turns into clear that this argument is just not totally legitimate.
From the very starting, LawBreakers appeared like a recreation that might be doomed to obscurity. As we highlighted in a earlier article again in August, the sport was purported to launch as a free-to-play title, but it surely was modified to a retail launch throughout growth. This variation ended up hurting LawBreaker’s life expectancy considerably, as whereas it did get pleasure from a one-time peak of seven,482 again in June 2017, that determine was reached through the recreation’s open beta.
As soon as LawBreakers really hit retail in Aug. 2017 , these numbers took a nosedive. Peak gamers fell from 7,482 to three,003 and dropped to beneath 1,000 by October. There has no been no signal of it recovering both. Even with a content material street map in place, the playerbase has continued to dwindle and is now within the double digits.
Nonetheless, even with that unlucky choice, timing did play a consider all this — simply not in the way in which Nexon describes.
Relatively than PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds, it was the choice to launch LawBreakers throughout a time when the hero shooter style was (and nonetheless is) dominated by the likes of Overwatch and Paladins. In comparison with these two, LawBreakers by no means sparked widespread curiosity nor did it do sufficient to lure potential gamers away from different titles. As many will inform you it borrows far an excessive amount of from already established hero shooters, with out doing sufficient by itself to separate it from the pack.
There is no such thing as a larger proof of that truth than by checking how a lot consideration it garners within the media. The final time something about this recreation was widely reported on was again in December when it had a particular vacation occasion. Earlier than that? Extra tales concerning the recreation’s dwindling participant rely. As I stated earlier than, LawBreakers is a kind of video games that solely actually makes headlines when one thing dangerous happens — primarily as a result of there may be hardly ever something good to say about it.
Even on a private stage, regardless of having no love for the hero shooter style, I can nonetheless at the very least inform you about Overwatch and Paladins because of phrase of mouth. Alternatively, I can do no such factor for LawBreakers except I am going out of my solution to analysis the subject (comparable to discovering Steamchart numbers).
So, sure, whereas PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds is the recreation on Steam right now and there’s little doubt that it damage LawBreakers to some extent, to quote PUBG because the singular explanation for the LawBreakers’ poor fortunes (neither Overwatch or Paladins are talked about within the report) appears off. The underside line is that even with PUBG round, different video games on Steam — even these throughout the identical style — nonetheless managed to be successful, whereas LawBreakers was by no means doing totally effectively to start with.
LawBreakers has many issues, however PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds is only one.