Boss Key Co-Founder Cliff Bleszinski Blames ‘Wokeness’ For LawBreakers Failure

Back in 2017, Boss Key Productions, a studio co-founded by Gears of War creator Cliff Bleszinski, released a buy-to-play low-gravity first-person shooter called LawBreakers. Unfortunately, the game was smothered by Fortnite and PUBG’s popularity and was shut down the next year due to poor sales along with the studio itself.

Bleszinski, a.k.a. “Dude Huge”, recently published his thoughts on Instagram on why LawBreakers failed. According to Bleszinski, the game failed because it was too “woke.” For those of you who are unfamiliar with the millennial slang, Merriam-Webster defines it as being “aware of and actively attentive to important facts and issues (especially issues of racial and social justice).”

Here’s the full caption on Instagram:

“Ever since the studio closed I’ve been wracking my brain what I could have done differently. Pivot HARD when the juggernaut of Overwatch was announced. Been less nice with my design ideas and more of a dictator with them.

One big epiphany I had was that I pushed my own personal political beliefs in a world that was increasingly divided.

Instead of the story being ‘this game looks neat’ it became ‘this is the game with the ‘woke bro’ trying to push his hackey politics on us with gender neutral bathrooms.’ Instead of ‘these characters seem fun’ it was ‘this is the studio with the CEO who refuses to make his female characters sexier.’ Instead of ‘who am I going to choose’ it became ‘white dude shoehorns diversity in his game and then smells his own smug farts in interviews’ instead of just letting the product … speak for itself.

It’s okay to be political when your company or studio is established for great product FIRST. But we were unproven and I regret doing it. (This will be quite the doozy of a chapter in the upcoming memoir.)”

Of course, the game’s untimely demise could also be due to balance issues, a faulty business model, a steadily declining playerbase, telling the press to “fuck off”, Bleszinki’s claims that Epic was trying to “hire away” his team, or simply because Fortnite and PUBG were just too big of a competition.

Thoughts? Hit us up in the comments section below.

Source: VG24/7