Boss Key Productions Shuts Down Effective Immediately

Cliff Bleszinski just posted this on Twitter:

Well, this was quick...

Wow. Well, it's been a rough go for that company after Lawbreakers probably undersold to a greater degree than even their worst predictions. The release of Radical Heights in such an early, super unfinished state makes more sense now; it was probably months and months away from actually being ready for the public to see, but I'd guess that the studio was doing so badly that they needed to release Radical Heights as-is on the long shot that it would somehow be super popular and bring an influx of cash to keep the studio afloat.

Hoping everyone winds up on their feet...

I remember my father bringing home Epic Pinball and Jazz Jackrabbit floppies that Epic sent our local paper in the mail (my father owned/published it).

Not too many years later, Unreal Tournament was blowing my mind. Then Gears blew my mind all over again.

I’m bet Cliff will wind up somewhere, his own company or otherwise, doing something cool before we know it.

It was no secret that Boss Key was in serious trouble, but still, that's a damn shame. Hope Dude Huge comes back with a hit again some day. Jill Of The Jungle VR, perhaps.

EDIT: Umm, this is weird... when I click on and refresh this thread, it redirects me here: https://www.giantbomb.com/call-of-duty-3/3030-19391/forums/meh-its-ok-4/. One time, it redirected me to an old locked thread about Mario. It only happens on this thread, from what I can tell. Can someone else try it and see what happens?

Edit 2: Seems okay now. What an odd glitch.

It's obviously not going to happen, but I really feel like they should be giving refunds to anyone that dropped money on Radical Heights in the barely more than a month it was around. It felt pretty gross that they had income streams in a game that was so unfinished anyway, but if people bought in it was with the assumption that development would continue.

Read that a few minutes ago. Bummer. I thought their BR game was coming along nicely and looking like it'd carve it's own slice of the BR genre. Maybe some publisher will buy it up. GL to everyone affected. Cliffy will be back, I have no doubt.

"I'm going to take some time off to reflect." I suppose it's just my general perception of Cliffy based on how he presents himself in interviews and such, but this just rubs me the wrong way. Maybe he can afford to just roll up the company, toss it aside as a failed experiment and take a vacation, but his employees can't afford to do the same and are going to be scrambling to find work to pay their bills and feed their families. Nothing about his statement is acknowledges that at all.

Whilst it's a shame for those employed, I had little faith in Cliff Bleszinski to begin with.

It was a tiny startup, they would have known this was coming. Assuming he treated his employees poorly based on his statement is asinine.

LawBreakers was a mess in more ways than one. I was honestly surprised that didn't sink them outright and they still had energy to churn out Radical Heights in whatever form. Cliffy changed a lot for the better since his super early edgy years, but I unfortunately think he's part of the old guard that just haven't moved on with the times. Games evolved and these days just keeping up with the trends isn't really enough, you need to be a few steps ahead of the game, and sadly Cliffy B for a long time now seemed like he was several steps behind. The guy is going to be ok, if anyone I feel bad for the people working in that studio that probably just wanted to keep making games and now they'll be out of a job.

@mrplatitude: EPIC are near enough to the studio that's just shut down and are hiring hand over fist for a little game called Fortnite. As long as Cliffy B made it clear to the staff that Radical Heights was a silver bullet they needed and gave them opportune time to decide if they wanted to take that risk or go elsewhere - there's not much else he can do. If he failed to do that though, then that's incredibly shitty.

Making games is hard

Best of luck to all affected.

Damn, this sucks. Hope everyone is able to land on their feet.

Can't say I'm even remotely surprised. I feel sorry for all the people looking for work now. I don't feel particularly sorry for Cliffy B and/or the rest of the management. I wouldn't call it hate as much I would disappointment.

Nether Lawbreakers nor Radical Heights were terrible, but they both felt like wildly inferior products in already crowded genres. Take Lawbreakers for instance. After Overwatch came out and set the world on fire, there's no excuse for Lawbreakers being as bland as it is. It does a few cool things, but it came out a year after a similar game that was at that point already one of the most recognizable, frequently quoted, and popular games ever. I obviously don't know what, if anything, was going on behind the scenes at Boss Key, but from an outsider's perspective, it just sorta feels like they weren't really aware of the climate/landscape they were stepping into.

Same thing with Radical Heights, Again, not a bad game at all imo, but the moment that trailer dropped, people were already screaming Fortnite clone because of the artstyle. Gameplay-wise, the two are very different beasts, but Radical Heights had already lost people before it could even get started. And then the game drops in early access, clearly in need of tons more dev time, begging the question of "why play this when I have Fortnite or even PUBG? two game that are essentially already finished with established fanbases and streamers and that are just getting more and more content added."

Hey, I don't run a company, so I'm just gonna assume the people in charge had good reasons, at least to them, for doing what they did. Again, just as an outsider looking in, it just seemed like two very bad choices one right after the other.

That sucks. And Radical Heights seemed like it was doing okay. But maybe not good enough to maintain.

I remember Lawbreakers had a huge booth/line at E3. Everyone seemed so excited then nothing.

@jesus_phish:

Yeah hope that was the case.

Wow I'm pretty sure they just held a streamer tournament for radical heights like a week ago. I guess that was last ditch effort.

Hubris

Figures. Hope they all managed to jump ship. Wonder what Cliffy's next "Billion Dollar IP" is gonna be...

Good luck to em all.

@vamino: the servers will stay up for tge near future, they may find a buyer for the ip to take over.

Hope everyone at the studio recovers and finds work before the economy crashes.

I see a lot of comfy armchairs in this thread. Would love to hear about projects or ambitions in general that you had, they must be doing great.

Sarcasm aside, good luck to the employees.

I was honestly surprised they lasted as long as they did. Once it became apparent LawBreakers was a bust this seemed inevitable. Wish the best for the employees, I'm sure Epic could use some devs with battle royale experience and maybe Cliff can put in a good word for them.

I refreshed it and got directed to the thread "How do you do finishing moves in the Pit 2?" weird glitch indeed.

I didnt mind Lawbreakers but it felt like a F2P game. But so does PUBG and Overwatch yet they did alright. It's easy to say that they (or Cliffy B) made some bad choices but other studios have blantantly stolen ideas and done well for themselves. I couldnt say why, as someone who doesnt really enjoy a lot of the latest crazes in gaming.

Personally I would have loved a new UT style game without wildy different characters with abilities and cooldowns. But I feel like i'm in the minority and that game also would have done poorly.

@shagge: It took me to an SSX 3 page.

I tried Lawbreakers but was pretty bored with it. I feel that way about shooters in general though, honestly.

Maaan those bikes though..

Time to join mega64 full time, and stop messing around with these cameos.

Hope he has a good last few with his Aussie. Cherish the time you have with your pet because you can never know when they will leave you.

This is such a weird ad hominem; it's like saying that someone has to play an instrument before they can criticize music or be a director before they can criticize a movie.

@ajamafalous: am i wrong, though?

yeah.

@travisrex: Yes.

@travisrex: Agree there's a lot of judgement calls being made without all the information. We're just assuming CliffyB doesn't care about or look after his employees, or that he is a monster for not bleeding his and other's assets dry keeping this particular thing alive, or that this wasn't a difficult decision for him amd whatever upper management there is to make. I'm sure there's somewhat of a grey area where the truth lies, maybe, but let's not try to guess at specifics?

I loved Lawbreakers and Radical Heights had some cool ideas. The lack of refunds for RH is gross but this sucks overall. I think this group had something it was just bad timing.

This is what happens when you just follow trends and don't really innovate on anything. I'm surprised CliffyB didn't try to create a MOBA about 10 years ago.

I still love CliffyB, I'm sad it didn't work out. He'll always be the guy that made UT & Gears to me, and I'll still want to see what he makes next. I hope everyone finds new gigs.

It kind of sucks they are killing radical heights like a month into early access, I thought it had some potential.

Well it looks like cliffy is a total piece of shit. Seems the Twitter post was the first the boss key employees knew of what was happening if Jon Lajoie's Twitter is to be believed.

Real unfortunate to read. Lawbreakers always looked cool to me, it just needed more before I jumped it.

Pouring one out

That would be totally fucked if true. The lack of outlets reporting this makes me doubt it's true because I feel like such a story would have blown up immediately, but we'll see what the next few days hold.

Looking back on it though, I wonder if there's a bigger story to the incident not too long ago when CliffyB accused Epic of poaching some of his staff. It was almost exactly a month ago, so maybe the remaining staff really didn't find out about the closure until very recently after all, but maybe some of them saw the writing on the wall and jumped ship to Epic? I could just be reading too much into though...

Lawbreakers seemed well made but the wrong game at the wrong time maybe? Radical Heights seemed like a "let's just put this thing out there and try to catch lightning in a bottle like Fortnite" thing. The reception was decent I think but not incredible. It's probably telling that while I don't have anything negative to say about what they put out, I wasn't compelled to, you know, actually play them either.

Sorry, I got suspicious when you didn't provide any links.

I found out it's Ron Lajolie, not Jon...

And Ron said this:

That post indicates that it's his daughter's first time of hearing about this, not his. It would be rather odd if it were the Lead Producer who was surprised, when the team's investors Nexon had made it public knowledge what a hole Lawbreakers was in ($32,600,000).

I wonder how quickly your mind works to publicly insult someone (i.e. cliffy is a total piece of s***), based on your incorrect information that you also chose not to share to try qualifying your insult. Or is there something I'm missing?

Man that is rough. I wish them all the best and hope they can all move onto bigger and better things even if its not in the video game industry.

Well I guess that gives some context for why I got a thread about Dr Horrible's Singalong Blog that had been inactive for 8 years!

Good for CliffyB to be able to take some time to "take some time off and reflect". I wish to all the other people affected that they are able to land on their feet.

Are there any developers with semi celeb status that arent hated? Seems like people are going out of their way online to make cliffy look horrible for simply making a tweet about his business failing. Jumping to conclusions about the mans character and how he treats employees? Maybe john Cormack is the only one without a giant hate base at least last i remembered.

It's awful; who knows, that one true gem of a game that put them fully on the map as a studio could've been in the pipeline.

I expected this news after I saw Radical Heights, I must admit, just because it seemed like a desperate move to bolt an '80s vibe to the battle royale formula and throw it out there in the earliest of states to see if it stuck at all.

Wish them all the best.