Cliff Bleszinski, widely known for his role in the Gears of War franchise, has broken his silence on the unlucky LawBreakers project. While the title, and Bleszinski’s new studio founded to develop it, shut down years ago, it seems the story isn’t over.
The former Epic Games lead designer worked on the first three Gears of War titles before he bowed out in 2014 presumably to retire permanently. Two years later, he co-founded a new studio, Boss Key Productions, under which he developed LawBreakers released in 2017.
Unfortunately for Bleszinski and his new studio, LawBreakers did not generate enough interest to justify its existence. As a result, he shut it down in 2018, alongside the development studio. Now, five years after the game’s demise, the investor and Broadway producer has teased an update about the title.
In a tweet shared via his Twitter account, Bleszinski stated that he had received a text from his lawyers and stated it is about the LawBreakers video game. He followed this up with a request for fans to stay tuned.
Just got a text from my lawyer about…
LawBreakers.
Stay tuned.
— Cliff Bleszinski (@therealcliffyb) April 13, 2023
However, the 48-year-old Boston native didn’t stop there. He expressed, in a follow-up tweet, his confusion at how, despite many people wanting the title to fail when it came out, many are currently expressing support for it. He went on to detail his efforts to develop the title as well as the effect of its eventual failure on his mental health.
In his words, “Like, the team worked their ASSES off on it. I relocated many people from other parts of the world for it and the internet was like HAR HAR IT DOESN’T HAVE ENOUGH PLAYERS. Meanwhile, studio craters and I have to deal with a year of crippling depression out of guilt.”
LawBreakers was a first-person shooter video game that Bleszinski developed under his new studio Boss Key Productions. While it received generally positive reviews, it performed poorly with audiences which led to its eventual demise since it became unsustainable to keep it running.
In a release announcing the game’s shutdown, Boss Key Productions stated “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 the easiest change to make, a change of this magnitude takes publishing, planning and resources to do it.” Apparently by this point, said resources had already dwindled.
The title was released for the PlayStation 4 and PC platforms in 2017. Despite fans clamoring for an Xbox One release, Bleszinski made the decision not to do so – a decision he would later regret and which many believe is, at least partially, responsible for the game’s demise given the Xbox has a larger fanbase for multiplayer first-person shooter titles than the PlayStation and PC.
Nevertheless, Bleszinski will be happy that the Gears of War franchise lives on. Earlier this year, news broke that The Coalition, the studio currently in charge of the franchise, is going all in on a sixth installment of the video game franchise.
A recent report revealed that Netflix has hired Doctor Strange’s scriptwriter Jon Spaihts to pen a screenplay for its feature film adaptation after it successfully acquired the rights last November.
