Boss Key Productions, developer of LawBreakers and Radical Heights, has closed. Boss Key is “effectively no more” according to the studio’s founder, Cliff Bleszinski. He issued a statement via tweet that detailed his thoughts about the development studio’s journey as well as a brief glimpse into his future.
His four-year journey with Boss Key has ended, which mainly has to do with the studio’s two games that failed to generate enough attention to sustain themselves. LawBreakers, an online hero shooter, wasn’t terribly received but couldn’t keep a large enough audience to live on. The game was notoriously ridiculed for its low player count throughout most of its life and Nexon, its publisher, even wrote the game off as a loss earlier this year.
Radical Heights, Boss Key’s recent battle royale, wasn’t as much of an infamous failure. But, given how early the game was pushed out, it looked like the dying gasps of a rapidly collapsing studio. Judging by Bleszinski’s statement, he was well aware of these shortcomings.
“LawBreakers was a great game that unfortunately failed to gain traction,” said Bleszinski, “and in a last ditch attempt we scrambled to do our take on the huge battle royale genre with Radical Heights which was received well, however it was too little too late.”
Bleszinski said he’s going to take some personal time off to reflect and spent time with his aging dog, Teddy. However, he stated that video games will always be a part of him and that he’ll return to game development one day. He said that he just needs to “withdraw and take this time” first.
After thanking his fans “from the bottom of [his] heart” for their support, Bleszinski mentioned that Radical Height‘s servers will still be up and running for the “near future.” He did not mention anything about LawBreakers‘ servers, despite the Boss Key Production‘s statement last month stating they wanted to give the game a second life but couldn’t spare the resources at the moment.
