‘LawBreakers’ Dead? Nexon Blames Low Player Count On ‘PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds’

The number of players actively playing “LawBreakers” at present is just a handful. And the idea that the first-person shooter is a failure is no longer open to debate. But publisher Nexon America thinks “LawBreakers” did not fail because of its own shortcomings.

Nexon implied in its earnings report that the launch of “PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds” may have significantly impacted the ability of “LawBreakers” to establish a solid following. “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.’”

Since its release in August 2017 on PC and PS4, “LawBreakers” did not attract a lot of players. To say that the game has a very small player base on PC is also an understatement. The latest figures on Steam Charts can attest that the game only has a handful of active players. In fact, from 8 p.m. to 12 am. ET on Jan. 10, Steam’s tracking system listed the game as having zero active players.

It wasn’t clear if a bug caused Steam Charts to indicate that “LawBreakers” active players dropped to zero this past Wednesday. Some concerned gaming community members took to Reddit to point out that during the time Steam Charts indicated that “LawBreakers” did not have active players, the active players of “PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds,” “Grand Theft Auto V” and many others also dropped to zero, suggesting that a bug may have been responsible for the mistake.

Even if a bug had caused several titles’ number of active players to drop to zero at the time, there is still no denying that “LawBreakers” is almost dead in its current state. On a daily basis, the game only has, at most, 25 players. It’s all-time peak is also depressing at 7,482, and that was recorded months ago.

When Nexon CFO Shiro Uemura talked about “LawBreakers” he sounded as though he has already accepted defeat. “We will not be accruing any other impairment loss pertaining to ‘LawBreakers’ in the future,” he said. The company’s loss was not disclosed. However, Nexon did state that its impairment loss made up “the majority” of its expenses during the third quarter last year, which was said to have totalled $32.6 million, as pointed out by PCGamesN.

Developer Boss Key Productions did state that it is contemplating on bringing “LawBreakers” to the Xbox One and even to the Nintendo Switch. “In regards to considering doing an Xbox version. I’d love to, but there’s still other discussions that need to be [done],” Boss Key co-founder Cliff Bleszinski told GameSpot late last year.

Speaking of the Switch, he said, “Nintendo just really knocked it out of the park with this one. Would definitely love to have even more games on it … If we were to do the Switch [version] … we’d want to switch the game up in a fun and interesting way, that would make itself work with the portability aspect of the console.” So far, no official announcements about the Xbox One and Switch versions have been made.