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Nexon's high expectations and PUBG blamed for Lawbreakers failure as firm writes off shooter

Nexon's high expectations and PUBG blamed for Lawbreakers failure as firm writes off shooter

Korean games giant Nexon has written off team hero shooter Lawbreakers.

That's according to an investor Q&A, as reported by PCGamesN, in which the company's CFO Shiro Uemura said that the firm will not be taking on any more losses for the title. No detail was given as to how much money the game has cost Nexon, but it does admit this loss accounts for the "majority" of its $32.6m in expenses for Q3.

Uemura went on to blame Playerunknown's Battlegrounds for the title underperforming, as well as Nexon's understandably high expectations for Cliff Bleszinski's shooter.

"Our results in North America in the third quarter were below our outlook, mainly due to the sales from Lawbreakers being below our expectations. Lawbreakers is a unique FPS developed for core users," Uemura said.

"We had very high expectations for its launch; however, the timing of its launch turned out to be unfortunate, specifically the blockbuster PC online game Playerunknown’s Battlegrounds came out right about the same time, making the market environment very tough for first-person shooters in general and for Lawbreakers."

Lawbreakers was Cliff Bleszinski's first game since returning to the industry in 2014 at new studio Boss Key. The title launched in August but failed to take off with some depressingly low sales and user figures on PC.

The developer has tried to turn things around, but it would seem this has not succeeded.

Last month, Boss Key co-founder Arjan Brussee left the studio to join Epic Games on an unannounced secret project.


PCGamesInsider Contributing Editor

Alex Calvin is a freelance journalist who writes about the business of games. He started out at UK trade paper MCV in 2013 and left as deputy editor over three years later. In June 2017, he joined Steel Media as the editor for new site PCGamesInsider.biz. In October 2019 he left this full-time position at the company but still contributes to the site on a daily basis. He has also written for GamesIndustry.biz, VGC, Games London, The Observer/Guardian and Esquire UK.