Lawbreakers came out on PC and PS4 last August and the game wasn’t really that popular. The player count was low on both platforms and the game struggles to find an audience. The game’s publisher, Nexon, feels the meteoric rise of PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds (PUBG) is to blame for the game’s epic failure.
Nexon announced its Q3 2017 earnings in a PDF report and a statement clearly says Lawbreakers failed to resonate with audiences especially those living in North America. The publisher feels it’s a hard time for online shooters thanks to PUBG.
They said: “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. 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.”
The player count comparing both games is astounding. PUBG currently has close to 3 million concurrent players. As for Lawbreakers, it currently only has less than 50 concurrent players on Steam.
Lawbreakers is an online only multiplayer shooter so a low population count means people will have a hard time finding matches to play in. The game is also not free to play yet which is also a barrier stopping the game from becoming popular.
Nexon and the game’s creator Cliff Bleszinski (Cliffy B) should have released the game free to play at launch to entice more people to play the game. Nobody wants to pay $29.99 for a game that isn’t guaranteed to work if there are no other people around to play it!