Do you remember Lawbreakers? Or Cliff Bleszinski? According to the developer legend himself, his almost-forgotten arena shooter could be making a comeback
With Lawbreakers a pretty solid arena shooter actually came out in 2017, but nobody was really interested in it. Just under a year later the servers went offline and the developer studio responsible for it, Boss Key Productions, even had to close down.
Now Lawbreakers seems to be making a comeback, with its creator and developer legend Cliff Bleszinski himself being involved.
Will Lawbreakers get a second chance?
What was Lawbreakers all about again? Lawbreakers was an arena shooter with first-person view and in the Unreal Engine 4, which was supposed to shake up the genre at the time and stand up to games like Overwatch. In doing so, Lawbreakers relied on a gameplay gimmick that involved a lot of frantic jumping around and fast-paced gameplay due to a low gravity.
Those who think of Unreal Tournament are not necessarily wrong. After all, Cliff Bleszinski, as the driving force behind Lawbreakers, was previously involved in just that, as well as other popular shooter series such as Gears of War.
Lawbreakers received good to solid reviews – you can read our review here – but never managed to gather a large player base behind it. At its release in August 2017, Lawbreakers reached around 3,000 players, but shortly after that only hundreds were enthusiastic about it.
The shooter was considered a real flop, even the switch to a Free2Play model couldn’t change that. In September 2018, the servers were then shut down.
Why Lawbreakers might be coming back: On Twitter, Cliff Bleszinski publicly spoke out and that people should expect news soon regarding Lawbreakers. Bleszinski also asked the Lawbreakers rights holder Nexon (also via Twitter), how it would look like with a revival of the brand.
These are already quite concrete hints, even if of course it remains to be seen whether Lawbreakers actually returns and if so, in what form. By the way, Blesinski himself is surprised by the positive response of the fans, which should probably only strengthen him in his intention.
Just got a text from my lawyer about….
LawBreakers.
Stay tuned.
– Cliff Bleszinski (@therealcliffyb) April 13, 2023
We will of course stay tuned to the topic for you!
What do you guys think about a possible revival of Lawbreakers? Would you be happy about a comeback of the failed arena shooter or could you do without it in good conscience? What do you think Lawbreakers would need to deliver to succeed in the current shooter landscape? Let us know in the comments!
