Nexon Blames LawBreakers' Disappointing Sales On PUBG

The game's publisher blamed LawBreakers for poor performance during the quarter and targeted PUBG as the main culprit.

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LawBreakers may not be six feet deep, but the loss of high-level staff and a new take from the game's publisher are going to inspire much confidence in potential consumers. In the latest quarterly report, Nexon not only blames the Cliffy B and Boss Key creation for low third-quarter earnings, but also points a finger directly at PUBG as the reason for LawBreakers' poor sales.

VG247 covered the earnings report and the text was pretty straightforward. “Our results in North America in the third quarter were below our outlook, mainly due to the sales from Lawbreakers being below our expectations,” the report stated.

“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,” Nexon also said in the report.

PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds, which earned our Person of the Year and Story (Non-narrative) of the Year, has reached pop culture phenomena levels and is surely an easy target for underperforming shooters. These reports are for investors, so maybe pointing at such a high profile game will soothe the burn of earnings in the third quarter, but even Cliff Bleszinski himself has spoken about the game's marketing opportunities. In addition, PUBG's appeal in the FPS genre wasn't even fully realized until much further beyond the launch of Early Access, so Nexon would have been more on the nose by targeting the extremely popular Overwatch. Whenever Q4 earnings come around, Nexon will possibly be able to get rid of the sour taste of LawBreakers with their upcoming 2D MOBA Hyper Universe.

Charles Singletary Jr keeps the updates flowing as the News Editor, breaking stories while investigating the biggest topics in gaming and technology. He's pretty active on Twitter, so feel free to reach out to him @The_CSJR. Got a hot tip? Email him at Charles.Singletary@Shacknews.com.

From The Chatty
  • reply
    January 3, 2018 10:45 AM

    Charles Singletary posted a new article, Nexon Blames LawBreaker's Disappointing Sales On PUBG

    • ArB legacy 10 years legacy 20 years
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      January 3, 2018 11:49 AM

      Oh, honey.

    • reply
      January 3, 2018 11:53 AM

      [deleted]

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      January 3, 2018 11:59 AM

      "A good game sold more than our shitty game we mad" - Nexon

      • reply
        January 3, 2018 12:00 PM

        well I'd phrase it as "a shitty game did something new while we polished a turd"

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      January 3, 2018 12:03 PM

      Bad messaging from the start didn't help, it was touted as a F2P game for so long and then became a $30 game no one really wanted midstream.

      Whose decision was that, anyway?

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        January 3, 2018 12:24 PM

        It was doomed from the start, F2P would not have saved it

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          January 3, 2018 12:30 PM

          It probably would not have been profitable, but even some the weakest F2P games manage to get some communities because there's no barrier for entry. All a game like this needs is people bored enough to give it a shot. When there's nobody even playing it's even harder to justify a purchase, budget priced or not.

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      January 3, 2018 12:10 PM

      They should blame kneeling NFL players.

    • reply
      January 3, 2018 12:24 PM

      Bad game gets bad sale, stop lying to investors, Nexon

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      January 3, 2018 12:28 PM

      The most unfortunate thing about this all is that LawBreakers is actually fun as fuck. It's KIND of like Overwatch/Unreal Tournament/TitanFall had a baby, sort of.

      The gameplay is very much vertical as it is horizontal and is hectic as fuck.

      I don't know how going from F2P to B2P was a decision that got signed off on (probably) multiple times. Like people saw this idea and said yes that's a good idea.

      They need to make it F2P with cosmetics but now the problem is that it's too late. I think the decision basically killed it dead.

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        January 3, 2018 12:42 PM

        Going f2p and selling cosmetics won't just do it, the game has core problems, I love the game but I can understand why people lose interest in it quickly.

        They need to abandon it and go back to drawing board and do a new one.

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          January 3, 2018 12:48 PM

          I think CliffyB is pretty good at drawing boards by this point.

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        January 3, 2018 1:27 PM

        I think the art direction killed it for me. The whole game tries to have "attitude" in the same way that 90's kids cartoon characrters had "attitude" It's like the whole game was made to be really cool by an 8 year old kid.....which I have come to learn is CliffyB's favorite aesthetic.

        While Overwatch is a Saturday morning cartoon, Lawbreakers is the one that aired at the same time on a less popular channel and you totally forgot about until someone does a "Top 10 forgotten 90's kids shows" youtube countdown video.

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          January 3, 2018 10:52 PM

          You nailed the analogy. I'm going to have to use that

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      January 3, 2018 12:40 PM

      Good news for Nexon, PUBG is just a short-lived fad! They'll be back on top in no time.

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      January 3, 2018 12:58 PM

      Cliffy, you sweet summer child.

      No matter. Try Again. Fail again. Fail better.

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      January 3, 2018 1:40 PM

      [deleted]

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