It has been announced by Cliff Bleszinski, co-founder of the games development group ‘Boss Key Productions’ and formerly of Epic Games, that his development studio is shutting down after four years of operation. He made the announcement via a tweet on his Twitter account:
A statement: pic.twitter.com/LwJD54bCwL
— Cliff Bleszinski (@therealcliffyb) 14 May 2018
In the tweet, he talks about how the studio’s debut FPS, Lawbreakers, “failed to gain traction,” and that the release of their Battle Royale game, Radical Heights, “was too little too late,” though he liked “to think that [they] had fun” making the games.
As for Bleszinski himself, he’s going to “take some time off and reflect,” and focus his energy on his family. He states that he hopes “to make something new again someday” for the game industry, though that likely won’t be for a while. He ends his statement with the point that the servers for both Lawbreakers and Radical Heights “will remain up for the near future,” though doesn’t add any more details for exact dates.
In related news, it turns out that not every employee at Boss Key Productions had been aware of the studio’s shutdown: a tweet from Ron LaJoie, a lead producer of Radical Heights, revealed that he only found out that the studio was closing down after his young daughter had messaged him a screenshot of a press release and had been asking if everything would be alright.
Tfw your 10yr old daughter sends a screenshot of the press release about your studio shutting down and asking if everything is going to be ok
:/
— Ron LaJoie (@ron_lajoie) May 14, 2018
Ron clarifies in a later tweet that this isn’t actually unusual in the industry, but geez, talk about rubbing salt in the wound.
Both Lawbreakers and Radical Heights can still be bought and played on Steam for a limited time, though I would advise against getting too invested with the servers closing down soon.