The publisher Nexon holds the battle royale phenomenon PUBG at least partly responsible for Team Shooter Lawbreakers not being a success in 2017. Our author Schuhmann has a different theory.
Recently, the Korean giant Nexon presented its annual report: They are focusing on mobile games which are selling like hotcakes and breaking records.
In the PC MMORPG segment, Nexon faces the problem that the oldie MapleStory is still so successful that hardly anyone is interested in MapleStory 2. Luxury problems.
Lawbreakers as a blemish on Nexon’s white reputation
However, there was a blemish at Nexon. The business in North America and thus the shooter Lawbreakers. It was released in 2017 on PS4 and PC and was not a success. Nexon is now writing off the title as a loss. About 30 million USD went down the drain.
Nexon says: The timing of the launch was difficult – the blockbuster PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds made 2017 a challenging business environment, especially for first-person shooters. This is what Nexon’s CFO says.
CFO says: PUBG is to blame – US Chief says: Call of Duty, Destiny 2, Overwatch
When you look at it: Questions arise. Lawbreakers is a hero shooter – PUBG a battle royale shooter. In an interview, Nexon America’s chief recently pointed to all possible games as being responsible for the failure, including Call of Duty, Destiny 2, and Overwatch.
But above all, the Nexon US chief recognized the “late release” in 2017 as the main problem. Now, suddenly, the corporate headquarters has identified PUBG as a scapegoat. Well then.
Lawbreakers suffers from the LoL effect – too late to the party
There is an effect that can be called the “LoL” effect. A certain type of game suddenly takes off: like League of Legends. A game concept resonates with players, many play it, and the studio becomes rich from it.
After that, other publishers try desperately to develop a similar game, but they often arrive too late.
Despite all attempts by publishers, no MOBA has been able to establish itself alongside leaders LoL and Dota 2 – not even a giant like Blizzard with Heroes of the Storm succeeded.
Instead, there were failures left and right: studios crashed while trying to develop the next LoL and grab a piece of the pie.
Experts said: There is no MOBA boom – there is only a LoL boom. Those who play LoL do not look for another MOBA – they want to stay with LoL, they have invested a lot of time there to get good and to build a strong account – they will not switch. Why would they? A PvP game like LoL itself is not boring.
Therefore, every attempt to capitalize on the MOBA trend is actually doomed to failure. Nevertheless, this keeps happening.
Hero shooters were in trend – everyone developed one
But even these “trend genres” age over time and new ones emerge. Over time, it became clear with MOBAs: The entry barrier is relatively high, matches can go quite long, and can be decided early. Then you have to “play it to the end”, there are boring parts in every match – this is actually not up to date anymore.
In addition: A new generation of players is also looking for fresh games – they do not want to be left behind. Just as MOBAs had replaced MMORPGs or real-time strategy games as a trend genre, studios were now looking for the next “hot genre”.
Around 2014/2015, several studios came up with the same idea: They develop games for the “new trend genre” hero shooter. Overwatch, Battleborn, Paladins, Gigantic, and LawBreakers are basically all hero shooters aimed at fast action: LoL as a shooter.
Fans of the games also like to accuse the developers of having copied from each other.
There can be only one!
The problem with hero shooters: The window of opportunity here closed in May 2016 with the release of Overwatch. Blizzard was the first with a polished game on the market. All other games failed more or less, even if they asserted: We have nothing to do with Overwatch, we are a completely different game.
The pull of Overwatch dragged all these other games down to misfortune. Only Paladins could hold as a Free2Play variant. Gigantic and Battleborn are already dead – Lawbreakers de facto as well.
In addition: The taste of players in 2017, when Lawbreakers finally released, had already moved on. Now players wanted a game that is like Overwatch, but without the teammates and with adrenaline in every second and not just during team fights.
Battle royale shooters were the new trend, even without PUBG
And by 2017, the trend for “battle royale shooters” was already there – it didn’t even need PUBG for that. People were already satisfied with weaker and flawed games like H1Z1 in 2016 and 2017. Everyone complained about it, but it had a long period of success.
Then when a better game in the trend genre appeared with PUBG, the perfect storm broke out and in 2017 there was only one topic: PUBG on a record hunt, PUBG the game of the year, PUBG the phenomenon.
But did Lawbreakers really crash in this storm? No, even without PUBG, Lawbreakers wouldn’t have become a hit. They missed the window of opportunity, and in their own genre, there was no more room for a hit besides Overwatch. And the genre they were actually developing for was no longer as trendy as at the start of development.
There were also specific problems: Many found the marketing to be too weak; moreover, LawBreakers is a Buy2Play game – perhaps they would have had more success as Free2Play.
The development with the trend genre will also not stop before battle royale games.
Currently, practically every second studio is developing a battle royale title. This could be the next gaming bubble that leads studios to disaster. The first game has already cost:
The studio that wants to have the next mega hit must already foresee the next super trend after battle royale games.
