LawBreakers Studio Moving on to New Projects

LawBreakers' peak player count this month was only a mere 25 players. Alas, it doesn't look good for the game, which has showed no signs of gaining even a little traction in recent months.

That said, in perhaps the least unsurprising news this year, the developer Boss Key Productions has announced that it is moving on from the title, and onto to a new game.

The news come via a new post from the developer's website that rather candidly speaks about how the game failed to cultivate an audience or generate the fund necessary to keep it sustained in the manner it originally planned for and anticipated.

It further notes that while the possibility of transitioning the game to free-to-play was a potential option to turn things around, the resources and publishing planning to complete such a pivot were and are unavailable.

The blogpost reads:

"It has been a while since we said anything about LawBreakers. With that, the past four months at Boss Key Productions has been especially trying, as we pride ourselves at being communicative and transparent.

So here is the very real truth, which may not come as a surprise.

The fact is LawBreakers failed to find enough of an audience to generate the funds necessary to keep it sustained in the manner we had originally planned for and anticipated. And while a pivot to free-to-play may seem like easiest change to make, a change of this magnitude takes publishing planning and resources to do it."

The developer notes that it will continue to support the game in its current state, but that's about it. Whilst it does this, it will transition to "other projects," featuring fresh creative leaders.

"The team here has worked hard on this game over the past three and a half years and our studio is determined to give this game the second life it deserves," reads the post. "However, between now and then, we cannot sit idle. We will continue to support the game in its current state, but we also need to focus on other projects with fresh creative leaders. We have been working on something new and we can't wait to share more about it! It's a passion project that we're in complete control of."

What this new project could be or how far it is in development remains to be seen, but it's good to know that LawBreakers hasn't sunken a studio that quite obviously contains a ton of talent.

For those that don't know: LawBreakers is a high-octane first-person shooter from Gears of War creator Cliff Bleszinski (co-founder of Boss Key Productions). Despite receiving decent critical acclaim, the game failed to accumulate an audience after its launch last August. And from there, things only got worse.

Within a few weeks hardly anyone was playing the game, and it was all about dead on arrival. Despite coming up drastically short out the gate, Boss Key stayed with the game for a few months, pumping out a variety of new content and free add-ons. However, none of it was able to reverse the tide.

What caused LawBreakers – a very solid first-person shooter – to fail isn't quite clear. It's likely a mixture of factors that at this point are neither here nor there. However, Bleszinksi is one of the most prominent figures in first-person shooter history, so it will be exciting to see what he cooks up next.

LawBreakers is available for PS4 and PC.