LawBreakers Publisher Partially Attributes Poor Sales to PUBG's Popularity

LawBreakers' publisher cited PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds as one reason why their game experienced low sales in their Q3 earnings report.

Within their report, Nexon commented on how the lower-than-expected sales of LawBreakers caused the publisher's overall earnings in North America to take a hit.

"Our results in North America in the third quarter were below our outlook, mainly due to the sales from Lawbreakers being below our expectations," the earnings report from Nexon read.

Continuing in their report, Nexon discussed the "unique" qualities of LawBreakers and established that they had high hopes for the game before it was released. However, there was one game that was specifically mentioned that stood in the way of Nexon's success: PUBG.

"LawBreakers is a unique FPS developed for core users. We had very high expectations for its launch; however, the timing of its launch turned out to be unfortunate, specifically the blockbuster PC online game PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds came out right about the same time, making the market environment very tough for first-person shooters in general and for LawBreakers."

PUBG certainly gave other shooters a rough run for their money, so it's entirely possible that the battle royale game did have an impact on LawBreakers with PUBG being restricted to PC at the time and LawBreakers only available on that platform and the PlayStation 4. However, there was quite a bit of time between the release of the two games, but LawBreakers' release date still wasn't optimal compared to other games. Destiny 2 was released in September just a month after LawBreakers came out in August which gave players just a month to get hooked on Cliff Bleszinski's game before Destiny 2 drew players in.

Bleszinski and the LawBreakers team also marketed the game as a more intense, hardcore experience for gamers, something that would certainly alienate those who are looking for a more casual experience. That's still quite different from how PUBG was marketed, but perhaps Nexon is somewhat correct in saying there was some overlap between the games that drew players away.