Cliff Bleszinski blames ego, bad publishing deal, and 1,000 paper cuts for LawBreakers' failure

Cliff Bleszinski has opened up again about why LawBreakers failed, and this time he's pointing the finger squarely at himself as much as anything else. In a new interview with 80.lv, the Gears of War creator and Boss Key co-founder laid out a string of mistakes that he says collectively killed the 2017 shooter.

The biggest one, by his own admission, was ego. Bleszinski says he turned down the chance to bring Rod Fergusson — his longtime collaborator from the Gears of War days — on board at Boss Key because he wanted the studio to be his show. That decision, he says, was "the first step of my ego creeping in." He also believed his personal reputation would drive player loyalty: "I thought there was this brand loyalty from the people who knew who I was, but it turns out people are loyal to the game, but they're not necessarily loyal to the person." The publishing deal with Nexon compounded things — Boss Key kept the IP rights, which sounded like a win, but Bleszinski now thinks that left Nexon with little financial incentive to push the game hard. Beyond those two big issues, he describes the studio's collapse as "death by 1,000 paper cuts": the art direction didn't stand out enough, a delayed Xbox launch meant missing Gears fans who might have followed him over, his personal struggle with alcoholism took a toll, and he admits he checked out too often instead of staying late alongside his team.

LawBreakers launched in August 2017 into a crowded hero shooter market dominated by Overwatch, which had released just over a year earlier and already had a massive player base locked in. Boss Key shut the game's servers down in September 2018, less than 14 months after launch. Bleszinski has spoken about the game's failure before, but this interview is one of the more candid breakdowns of how he sees his own role in it.

Despite everything, Bleszinski says the itch to make games hasn't gone away. "At the end of the day, I want to create characters and worlds," he told 80.lv. "I want to make stuff that people will cosplay as and get tattooed on their bodies." Whether that leads to anything concrete remains to be seen, but it sounds like he's not done yet.