Radical Heights Developer Boss Key Productions Shuts Down

Boss Key Productions, the developer responsible for LawBreakers and Radical Heights, has shut down.

Studio co-founder Cliff Bleszinski shared the news on Twitter in a statement that said the studio that was founded four years ago is "effectively no more." The former Epic Games director who's known for his work on the Gears of War games mentioned the studio's two games, Radical Heights and LawBreakers, and said that the former was a "last ditch attempt" to capitalize on the hype of the battle royale genre.

"Four years ago I set out to make a world class video game studio and I hired some of the best talent in the videogame industry," Bleszinski's statement said. They worked tirelessly to produce quality products and, while we had our ups and downs, I'd like to think we had fun doing it. LawBreakers was a great game that unfortunately failed to gain traction, and, in a last ditch attempt, we scrambled to do our take on the huge battle royale genre with Radical Heights, which was well-received, however, it was too little too late."

A statement: pic.twitter.com/LwJD54bCwL

— Cliff Bleszinski (@therealcliffyb) May 14, 2018

The first of the games mentioned was LawBreakers, a game that was released in 2017 but failed to attract much of an audience. LawBreakers operated with a shooter formula that some likened to that of Overwatch, a game that had by that point already established a clear foothold in the genre. The game was also marketed as a more hardcore experience compared to other games and was only released on the PC and PlayStation 4, both of these factors that likely played into a lukewarm reception at launch.

Radical Heights came out this year and looked to offer Boss Key's take on the battle royale gauntlet with a neon-clad game with weapons, ramps, and gadgets. Just as Bleszinski said, the game launched "too little too late" and only reached a peak player count of 8,500 players when it became available on Steam. That wasn't much higher than the opening numbers for LawBreakers, and though the peak player count went up on the second day, it dropped dramatically not long after it was launched.

Bleszinski also noted in his statement that the game creator would be stepping away for a while to "take some time off and reflect." He added that that Radical Heights' servers would remain up for the near future and said that he hopes to return to games again in the future.