Cliff “CliffyB” Bleszinski he never really accepted the failure of LawBreakers, which somehow remained in his heart. According to him, if Overwatch had he not existed, he would have at least had a chance of success, allowing Boss Key, his development studio, to survive.
For those who don’t know him, we’re talking about the father of the series Unreal and Gears of War, therefore not just any passer-by. But let’s go in order.
The arena shooter Lawbreakers was launched in 2017, about a year after Overwatch, the hero shooter from Blizzard Entertainment. The success of the second created unfavorable conditions for the first, with that market share already appearing occupied at that point.
Lots of bad luck
Bleszinski touched on the topic in an interview with Edge magazine, in which he admitted that the factors for the failure were different: “Every time a plane crashes, it’s usually caused by chain failures.”
From the overly “crowded” market to a terrible marketing campaign, for Bleszinski there were therefore many reasons for Lawbreakers’ collapse. Most notable of all, however, was the launch of Overwatch in 2016. According to the developer, when his development team saw the trailer for Blizzard’s game, they thought, “Oh God, we’re screwed.” The choice to include heroes in Lawbreakers was inspired by the then aggressive gods genre MOBAbut Overwatch’s all-too-similar style immediately became a problem for the developers.
To remedy this, Boss Key has tried to include many in his game unique features, where Blizzard went the most straight. But there was nothing to be done and many began to accuse Lawbreakers of having copied Overwatch, even though it was not possible, given the concomitance of the development and given that only an unwary person would have started competing in such a direct way with the house of Diablo.
Bleszinski then admitted that if he had known how things would have turned out, he would have handled development differently, for example by not hiring so many people: “I wouldn’t have gone for a triple-A shooter.” He would have instead chosen a smaller game to release first, instead of getting tangled up in such a big one.
A possible return of LawBreakers was recently feared, but it seems that the project fell through, so much so that Bleszinski never spoke about it again.
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