Lawbreakers
Lawbreakers launched to a fairly middling critical reception last year, with critics citing poor technical performance and poor matchmaking as hindering the performance. It also struggled to differentiate itself from genre-leading rivals such as Overwatch. Lawbreakers wasn’t terrible by any means, but it needed to be immaculate to topple its heavy-hitting competition that already boasted substantial communities. Unfortunately for developer Boss Key, that wasn’t to be. Lawbreakers never recovered from its shaky first impression, and only three months later, active players dropped to dismal numbers.
When it was announced in May of last year, it looked like a game hoping to get in on the hero-shooter action that Overwatch was already dominating. Sadly, when it launched, the Overwatch community had largely already written it off. Lawbreakers could have broken into this market, but due to a lack of differentiation from others in the genre – the only real change it made to the genre was the implementation of low gravity, which, after everything was said and done, felt more like a gimmick than anything else — it failed to grab the attention of many. On top of that, its message wasn’t clear. First it was a free-to-play game with mircrotransactions, and then it was converted to a $30 game. When it did finally launch, it went about as good as you can imagine. With a peak Steam player count of 7,482, it’s safe to say this game bombed. Sadly, for Boss Key Productions, the number of players continued to drop — in the last 24 hours, the peak player count was 56. In a last-ditch effort to save the game, it was converted to a free-to-play model. Then, a little under two months ago, it was announced that the title would see its servers shut off this September. In just one month, this game will be dead, bringing the total lifespan of this game to barely over a year.
