Lawbreakers sold below expectations because of PUBG, says dev

PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds (PUBG) has seen wild success since its release. The game has been breaking records on Steam and has been pulling in plenty of Xbox players since its early access release on the Xbox One in December 2017.

PUBG has needed to push a number of top games out of its way to reach such heights and that includes pushing an FPS named LawBreakers out. Overall, Lawbreakers was well-received upon release. Unfortunately, the game saw a 60% drop in its player base after its release.

According to Nexon’s Chief Financial Officer, Shiro Uemura, during a recent financial earnings call, LawBreakers poor sales was due to the popularity of PUBG.

“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.”

LawBreakers is a fun game and definitely worth a look if you’re into FPS games. It’s unfortunate that it got pushed out, but that’s the risk you take when releasing any type of product.