LawBreakers - Cliff Bleszinski's failed multiplayer shooter

[Outlander]

Get bent, Cliffy B.

 

[Infinitron]

Now it's free-to-play:

 

[fantadomat]

If it becomes successful now it will be the greatest trolling i have seen.

 

[Venser]

They should've made it free to play before closing the studio. It's a fun game.

 

[Baron Dupek]

http://bosskey.com/news/uncategorized/april-2018-studio-statement/
two months ago they stated "no F2P because reasons"
Oh man, so much publishing planning and resources.

so much planning

 

[Arnust]

This is Nexon's doing, though.

 

[LESS T_T]

Shutting down: https://steamcommunity.com/games/350280/announcements/detail/1667902016147679716

Notice About the Future of LawBreakers

Dear LawBreakers,

In light of the unfortunate news regarding Boss Key Productions shutting down, we regret to announce that we will be sunsetting our support of LawBreakers on September 14, 2018 as we are not able to operate the game.

Our servers will remain open until then and the game will be made free-to-play on Steam for all players effective immediately. Please note that any and all new in-game purchases will also be disabled and we will not be able to accept any refund requests.

We truly appreciate your understanding in this difficult time and we want to thank you all your support and being a part of the passionate LawBreakers community.

Thank you for staying with us throughout this journey.

-The LawBreakers Team

 

[Gerrard]

At least when Epic shut down Paragon they released the assets for people to use in UE for free, and they refunded people.

 

[Astral Rag]

Are In-App Purchases still available?

 

[Venser]

No

 

[Venser]

Free to play was just a temporary boost and it's back to shit numbers, 95 player peak in 24 hours. Played a bunch of games yesterday and had fun. It's all about verticality and if you're running on the ground, you're probably doing something wrong. There's a lot of emphasis on movement and every character has it's own style. One is sliding, other has a jetpack, assassin is swinging around like a Spider-Man, one can flash forward etc. It's skill based game, abilities aren't overpowered and you have to aim well while moving around or you can't do shit. It's suprisingly well optimized too, I get stable 150FPS on GTX 1050TI laptop. I'll play it as long as finding a game doesn't take too long. The good thing is that after finishing a match, the next one would start right away since all the players who just finished stay in queue. Kinda sad how it ended up.

 

[Venser]

RIP. Felt like playing, couldn't log in. Why not just give the dead game to the people and allow private servers?

 

[Great Deceiver]

But why?

 

[fantadomat]

What was this thread about,some game?

 

[unfairlight]

RIP. Felt like playing, couldn't log in. Why not just give the dead game to the people and allow private servers?

Probably because the game was never made with private servers in mind and that would take someone with access to source code and some time to implement. Maybe someone, some day will decide to make a private server regardless.

But why?

Because Lawbreakers was still a pretty unique game and it did various things right. Schadenfreude and joking about the failure is fun and all, but at some point it will become annoying when wanting to talk about it a bit more seriously.

 

[Reinhardt]

Because Lawbreakers was still a pretty unique game

Nah, gender neutral bathrooms are pretty much mainstream now.

 

[Dexter]

https://www.gamespot.com/articles/cliff-bleszinski-says-he-made-lawbreakers-too-woke/1100-6473394/

Cliff Bleszinski Says He Made LawBreakers Too "Woke"
"White dude shoehorns diversity in his game and then smells his own smug farts in interview."
By Eddie Makuch on February 4, 2020 at 7:17PM PST

Cliff Bleszinski struck gold with the Gears of War franchise, but his first game after leaving developer Epic--the team-based shooter LawBreakers--was not a success. That game, and developer Boss Key's battle royale follow-up Radical heights, failed to find an audience. And in turn, Boss Key closed its doors and Bleszinski left the gaming world.

Bleszinski is now taking time to reflect. He said in post on Instagram that lately he's been thinking about what he could have done differently with Boss Key. Easy ideas might have been to "pivot hard" when Blizzard's own team-based shooter, Overwatch, was announced, or he could have been "more of a dictator" with his ideas for LawBreakers, he remarked.

But perhaps a bigger revelation for Bleszinski was that he regrets getting political. He said he wishes he let LawBreakers speak for itself instead of being the "white dude [who] shoehorns diversity in his game and then smells his own smug farts in interview."

You can read Bleszinski's full statement below:

"Ever since the studio closed I've been wracking my brain what I could have done differently. Pivot HARD when the juggernaut of Overwatch was announced. Been less nice with my design ideas and more of a dictator with them.

One big epiphany I had was that I pushed my own personal political beliefs in a world that was increasingly divided.

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.

It's okay to be political when your company or studio is established for great product FIRST. But we were unproven and I regret doing it. (This will be quite the doozy of a chapter in the upcoming memoir.)"

As Bleszinski mentions here, he is currently writing a memoir that will chronicle his life and experiences in the video game industry.

Bleszinski left Epic after 20 years in October 2012, prior to the release of Epic's massively popular battle royale game Fortnite. He started Boss Key with former Killzone boss Arjan Brussee in 2014; the team shipped LawBreakers in 2017 and the early access PC game Radical Heights in 2018 before closing down later that year.

Bleszinski is now pursuing one of his other passions: theatre. He is an investor in the critically acclaimed Broadway musical Hadestown, which he is also co-producing. Hadestown earned a whopping 14 Tony award nominations, winning eight--including Best Musical.

Some semblance of self-awareness in retrospect? Although he manages to get it exactly wrong in the end. I'm not sure not going Woke would have especially helped in this case, since the games themselves sucked and were "Me Too's", it might have even helped him gain some cheap attention. But it definitely would have helped an established franchise do a lot better e.g. last Battlefield, Gears of War and similar.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

Even if it wasn't "woke" it would have failed like 99% of other copy-cat projects of online-only games.
Copying a game works great when it's offline: People want more of something that's good. e.g., Pathfinder: Kingmaker is good because people just wanted more of IE games. Copying online games is almost always a failure because there's no reason to quit playing your current game to go play that one.

 

[†††]

Some semblance of self-awareness in retrospect?

He simply wants money.

 

[Perkel]

"It's okay to be political when your company or studio is established for great product FIRST. But we were unproven and I regret doing it."

Translation: I should do it only when games were selling not when i need those fucking white males to buy my shit game.

 

[DraQ]

So, from woke to broke?

 

[Infinitron]

This feels like a retcon, I don't remember people talking about Lawbreakers being woke. It was mostly just generic (though reviewers said the game was mechanically solid). Personality-wise Cliffy B was just a spastic git more than anything.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

This feels like a retcon, I don't remember people talking about Lawbreakers being woke. It was mostly just generic (though reviewers said the game was mechanically solid). Personality-wise Cliffy B was just a spastic git more than anything.

 

[Alpan]

Yeah, wokeness in general wasn't much of a thing when Lawbreakers was announced or released, and the game basically billed itself as the Next Big Thing from Cliffy B.

 

[Alienman]

Forgot about the in-game gender neutral toilet?

Edit:

rusty_shackleford was faster on the trigger.