Publisher Blames LawBreakers' Failure on PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds

Remember the overly edgy sci-fi hero shooter called LawBreakers? It's no surprise if you don't. The game was a massive failure, and their publisher blamed it on PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds.

LawBreakers publisher Nexon reported a financial expense of $32.6 million, with a majority of that resting on this game. With it flopping as hard as it did, investors wanted answers. This prompted Nexon's financial executive, Shiro Uemura, to make the following statement.
 

"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."

A statement that made me want to jump out of my chair for how grievously false it was. While PUBG has absolutely been a success this year, the faults with LawBreakers was by no means related to PUBG's success.

The battle royale genre of shooters is rather different than the Hero Shooter genre that LawBreakers was. I would sooner believe that Overwatch made a bigger difference. Not to mention that this doesn't explain LawBreaker's poor console sales, where PUBG wasn't available.

LawBreakers simply wasn't that good of a game. An unfortunate reality for the few who did enjoy it. You can read the statement in Nexon's Q3 2017 Earnings Conference Call Transcript.