The CEO of Lawbreakers studio Boss Key Cliff Bleszinski has spoken out about the less-than-stellar launch for the new team shooter.
Speaking to Eurogamer, the development legend said that he viewed Lawbreakers as “a marathon, not a sprint”, meaning that the title is a long term prospect and not something that makes or breaks Day One.
Despite lower-than-expected sales, Lawbreakers was still the fifth most purchased game on Steam last week, though SteamSpy sales data points to the title having sold in the region of 47k copies.
“We see this game as a marathon and not a sprint,” he said.
“We're having a solid opening but we're reminding people that we shipped with nine characters, in the play test lab we're playing with role ten, it's fully playable. I've played two maps that are 99 per cent ready to go, maybe new game types that I can't really talk about. I've seen skins and meshes for characters that are really cool that players won't see for a couple of months. That's the world we live in - it's no longer fire and forget.
“What we've found is that Steam is a very harsh platform, and if you go to Steam reviews for any game, you can't bullshit Steam users, PC users. I'm not saying you can bullshit console users, but Steam users are some of the most savvy gamers out there. If you go to our reviews they're 90 per cent positive. We've created a community over the last three years of really loyal and dedicated fans who love the game and the studio.”
When challenged by Eurogamer on Lawbreakers low concurrent player figures, which stood at around 1,500 during its launch week, Bleszinski said: “It's like I said, it's a marathon not a sprint. I'd rather be the underhyped game that slowly ramps up into something that people adore than something that comes out with way too much hype that there's a backlash for, which is why I think the Steam reviews are so positive.
“We're going to continue to raise awareness, continue to support the product - if you look at the phenomenon that was League of Legends, it built off a Warcraft 3 mod then slowly but surely blossomed into this immense amazing thing, and I'd rather be the game that comes up and has that hockey stick ramp with a slow burn and builds up rather than the triple-A hype machine where you have a bazillion people playing it month one and it goes down exponentially then they follow up with an annual product.”
