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Remember LawBreakers? Five years after it shut down, CliffyB wants it to come back

Prison escape.

LawBreakers
Image credit: Nexon

LawBreakers died back in 2018 - but its chief creator now wants it to come back.

LawBreakers was a hero shooter developed by Boss Key Productions, the now defunct studio set up by Cliff "CliffyB" Bleszinski after he left Epic having famously worked on the Unreal Tournament and Gears of War franchises.

Despite a big pre-release push by publisher Nexon, LawBreakers flopped, with its Steam concurrent player count peaking at 7482 in June 2017 when it launched via open beta. Nexon later blamed LawBreakers' disastrous fortunes on battle royale PUBG, which at the time was just about the biggest game in the world.

A fresh-faced Chris Bratt interviews Cliff Bleszinski ahead of LawBreakers' launch.Watch on YouTube

In truth, LawBreakers was better compared to other hero shooters, such as Blizzard’s Overwatch, than a battle royale - and there, too it suffered by comparison.

All this despite LawBreakers being pretty good. Eurogamer's LawBreakers review recommended the game, calling it "an inventive, electric and expertly engineered classic competitive shooter that deserves your time".

Fast forward five years and CliffyB is talking about a resurrection.

On Twitter, he confirmed the rights to LawBreakers are with Nexon, and called on Nexon boss Owen Mahoney to help make it happen.

Clarifying his thoughts, CliffyB said he's uninterested in actually developing a new LawBreakers game (or any new game, for that matter), but would be up for consulting on it.

Nexon hasn't breathed a word about LawBreakers ever since the game went under, but we've asked for comment to see if it's interested in CliffyB's suggestion.

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