Radical Heights Developers begin closing down after their failure of Lawbreakers

[ItsMitch]

S: Twitter

Radical Heights is now shutting it's doors after the disaster called Lawmakers. A statement was issued on his personal twitter account. 

Quote

A statement was issued by Cliff Bleszinski on the future of Boss Key Productions. 

 

Dextero - https://www.dexerto.com/esports/radical-heights-developer-boss-games-make-surprise-announcement-about-the-future-of-the-studio

Quote

 

With Gears of War mastermind, Cliff ‘CliffyB’ Bleszinski, on the team, the sky appeared to be the limit for Radical Heights on the back of other BR successes.

 

It appears that it wasn’t all rosey behind the scenes however, with CliffyB making a statement on May 14th to reveal the studio had closed down.

 

Calling Radical Heights a little too late, he explained despite hiring the best talent possible, it hasn’t worked out.

 

The Radical Heights servers will remain online for the foreseeable future, but for now CliffyB will be taking some time out.

 

It's kinda sad in a way but the problem I have with this is that Cliff went out to accuse Epic Games (Fortnite devs) of stealing his employees and now he's shutting up shop, seems really fishy and sketchy to me. Maybe he does need a break from this game development business to work out some proper ideas and put them into actual games. 

 

The servers are going to remain up for the future, unsure on if they'll close or not. 

[dalekphalm]

From what I've read, the game - despite all accounts of being pretty good, and getting really good reviews - sold extremely poorly. It simply didn't have a sustainable player base.

 

Perhaps the game was too late, and missed the bandwagon? Perhaps the industry is experiencing fatigue for class-based team shooters? I don't know.

[ItsMitch]

Just now, dalekphalm said:

From what I've read, the game - despite all accounts of being pretty good, and getting really good reviews - sold extremely poorly. It simply didn't have a sustainable player base.

 

Perhaps the game was too late, and missed the bandwagon? Perhaps the industry is experiencing fatigue for class-based team shooters? I don't know.

We need something that'll give the industry a kick up the ass, all these shooters are just getting dul, GIVE US UNIQUE STUFF

[Marinatall_Ironside]

4 minutes ago, SC2Mitch said:

We need something that'll give the industry a kick up the ass, all these shooters are just getting dul, GIVE US UNIQUE STUFF

It's why for my tactical shooter/ARPG/MilSim game, there won't be any multiplayer. This should let me come up with something unique.

[Techstorm970]

I remember LawBreakers looking really good, but with some major drawbacks:

 

1. Overwatch, Paladins, and the resurgence of TF2 made for an already crowded market.

2. Boss Key was a no-name studio.

3. The system requirements were WAY too high in comparison. (GTX 660 was the MINIMUM requirement)

 

Not surprised things didn't go well.

[AlTech]

1 hour ago, SC2Mitch said:

We need something that'll give the industry a kick up the ass, all these shooters are just getting dul, GIVE US UNIQUE STUFF

Personally I just want someone to make a game like BF4 but not made by EA with no Micro-transactions and with a more modern game engine and a different setting.

[AlTech]

36 minutes ago, Techstorm970 said:

I remember LawBreakers looking really good, but with some major drawbacks:

 

1. Overwatch, Paladins, and the resurgence of TF2 made for an already crowded market.

2. Boss Key was a no-name studio.

3. The system requirements were WAY too high in comparison. (GTX 660 was the MINIMUM requirement)

For an e-Sports title that is high?

[Dabombinable]

5 minutes ago, AluminiumTech said:

For an e-Sports title that is high?

The game pretty much needed to run on potatoes so that high FPS were possible.

[App4that]

It's boring. Not that complicated to figure out lol

[Techstorm970]

Just now, AluminiumTech said:

For an e-Sports title that is high?

Overwatch: HD 4400 iGPU min, GTX 460 dGPU min, GTX 660 rec

Paladins: Geforce 8800 GT min, GTX 560 rec

TF2: Geforce FX 5500 min, Geforce 6800 GT rec

 

LawBreakers: GTX 660 min, GTX 970 rec

 

Yes, that is really f**king high for e-sports!  Rocket League, any MOBA, and CS:GO are in the same realm as Overwatch and Paladins.

[AlTech]

1 minute ago, Techstorm970 said:

Overwatch: HD 4400 iGPU min, GTX 460 dGPU min, GTX 660 rec

Paladins: Geforce 8800 GT min, GTX 560 rec

TF2: Geforce FX 5500 min, Geforce 6800 GT rec

 

LawBreakers: GTX 660 min, GTX 970 rec

 

Yes, that is really f**king high for e-sports!  Rocket League, any MOBA, and CS:GO are in the same realm as Overwatch and Paladins.

No offence but none of the games you listed above apart from LawBreakers look good. Most of them look mediocre at best.

[Techstorm970]

1 minute ago, AluminiumTech said:

No offence but none of the games you listed above apart from LawBreakers look good. Most of them look mediocre at best.

I never said any of them looked pretty.  All I said was that LawBreakers has extremely high requirements compared to similar games and popular e-sports titles.

[Nowak]

3 hours ago, dalekphalm said:

From what I've read, the game - despite all accounts of being pretty good, and getting really good reviews - sold extremely poorly. It simply didn't have a sustainable player base.

 

Perhaps the game was too late, and missed the bandwagon? Perhaps the industry is experiencing fatigue for class-based team shooters? I don't know.

Oh, the failures of Lawbreakers and Radical Heights are easy to figure out.

 

1. Minimal marketing until 10 days before Lawbreakers came out, Radical Heights came outta nowhere
2. Cliff Bleszinski's abrasive behavior
3. Nothing about Lawbreakers or Radical Heights stood out above the rest of the shooter or battle royale markets
4. Cliff was literally only in it for the money ("the next billion dollar IP", kept bragging about how he made millions through Oculus after Facebook bought them, one of the core themes of RH was money just to drive the reason Cliff re-entered the industry home)
5. Chasing trends from more successful companies is not guaranteed success

 

Also, Cliff announced this on Twitter before notifying his employees, which likely means none of his employees received severance packages. So, while Cliffy B walks away still a millionaire, his now ex-employees get nothing. I wouldn't even include Boss Key on my resume if I were in this situation, I'd prefer to pretend it never happened.

 

It's a shame 65 people lost their jobs, but I have zero sympathy for Cliff Bleszinski.

[Arc_Jester]

It was a fun game with unique mechanics but it was never going anywhere unless it was F2P considering the competition.

[Kamjam21xx]

4 hours ago, dalekphalm said:

From what I've read, the game - despite all accounts of being pretty good, and getting really good reviews - sold extremely poorly. It simply didn't have a sustainable player base.

 

Perhaps the game was too late, and missed the bandwagon? Perhaps the industry is experiencing fatigue for class-based team shooters? I don't know.

I wanted to play it, just wasnt in the market at the time. 

 

They should give the tribes series another reboot. Id start something like that myself, but im going to be really busy.

[Brooksie359]

3 hours ago, AluminiumTech said:

No offence but none of the games you listed above apart from LawBreakers look good. Most of them look mediocre at best.

Having more people being able to play your game makes it much easier to gain a large player base. I mean with a game like fortnite it is little wonder how it became so popular. It's easy to run so most people can play it on their computer and it's free creating a game that people can easily pick up and play with all their friends. For me having a game that me and all my friends can play together is important and makes the experience a ton of fun so having games so I often play games that aren't very demanding because not all of my friends have gaming desktops. 

[Misanthrope]

4 hours ago, SC2Mitch said:

We need something that'll give the industry a kick up the ass, all these shooters are just getting dul, GIVE US UNIQUE STUFF

Cliffy B was never going to do that anyway, not even when he had Microsoft's gaze and money.

[ItsMitch]

1 minute ago, Misanthrope said:

Cliffy B was never going to do that anyway, not even when he had Microsoft's gaze and money.

"Hey guys let's do something revolutio-........ **see's MS attorneys with a huge money bag** Hey guys, let's make a Battle Royale that'll be really unique and be a great hit!"

[Hugh_Mungus]

https://www.rollingstone.com/glixel/news/nexon-pubg-to-blame-for-lawbreakers-poor-performance-w514883 

Honestly Pubg killed their release IMO, Everyone hopped on the BR bandwagon.

[Doobeedoo]

That title. 

Anyway, really not surprised about Radical Heights failure, saw it from the start. 

For LawBreakes though, it was actually really good, played very well. It was really a better version of OW though. Too bad it came a bit later after OW and people hardly switch, but people didn't even gave it a chance. Also Blizzard image is a huge thing as well. Anothe thing is, many saw it as hard to get into cause of it's pace and more aim requirement. 

[Nowak]

15 hours ago, Hugh_Mungus said:

https://www.rollingstone.com/glixel/news/nexon-pubg-to-blame-for-lawbreakers-poor-performance-w514883 

Honestly Pubg killed their release IMO, Everyone hopped on the BR bandwagon.

PUBG had little to do with it. Between the announcement and release of Lawbreakers, Overwatch, Paladins and Fortnite came out, and Team Fortress 2 had a resurgence with a major update, and then Lawbreakers itself did very little to stand out among the crowd, aside from an under-utilized mechanic (the whole anti-gravity thing, which a lot of the maps weren't designed around).

[Syntaxvgm]

 

Some time ago I saw this, I really liked this as it highlights one of the worst cases of a potentially competent game developer not understanding the market, and for games of this style you need a huge player base for people to want to play it, and you will only get that by bringing something truly new to the table, not perfecting it.

[Ryujin2003]

On 5/14/2018 at 3:40 PM, JurunceNK said:

It's why for my tactical shooter/ARPG/MilSim game, there won't be any multiplayer. This should let me come up with something unique.

I mean, I'm working on a shooter too, but trying to bring a touch of classic FPS back. My team and I are only considering local split screen co-op, but that is the only thing close to MP. Story line (something taken for granted today) and unique aspects of approaching a classic game still should be easier, I agree.

 

I like single player games, and am not much into competitive MP.

[Ryujin2003]

On 5/15/2018 at 12:34 PM, NowakVulpix said:

PUBG had little to do with it. Between the announcement and release of Lawbreakers, Overwatch, Paladins and Fortnite came out, and Team Fortress 2 had a resurgence with a major update, and then Lawbreakers itself did very little to stand out among the crowd, aside from an under-utilized mechanic (the whole anti-gravity thing, which a lot of the maps weren't designed around).

Yeah, I saw a crap ton of lawbreakers adverts, and it looked cartoonish, much like overwatch, TF, Fortnight, etc... The fact that I didn't even understand how the game play related to it's title was pretty much a huge let down and deterrent.

[Unhelpful]

Same issue as with Lawbreakers, it came in too late.