Cliff Bleszinski finally admits releasing LawBreakers on PlayStation over Xbox was a massive mistake

Cliff Bleszinski is a name still beloved by Xbox fans around the world. As the mastermind behind the Gears of War franchise that made the Xbox 360 a powerhouse, it was a surprise to everyone when he decided to release LawBreakers, his first game after leaving Epic Games, only on PlayStation 4 and PC.

(Picture: Boss Key Productions)

Published in August 2017, LawBreakers was an ability-based team shooter similar to Overwatch, but competing against Blizzard's esports first shooter and others like Hi-Rez's Paladins proved to be the downfall of Cliff's first outing outside of his tenure at Epic Games.

The game launched on Steam and didn't even crack the Top 100 Most-Played titles, with a 60% user base drop from the beta to the official launch, going from a high of 7,500 concurrent players to almost less than 1,000 days after release.

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Industry experts and fans alike agreed on one thing that seemed rather obvious at the time, a rationale that Cliffy B himself finally admitted to on social media: Xbox could've saved LawBreakers.

“Yes, it WAS a mistake putting LawBreakers on PlayStation over Xbox,” he tweeted out.

Cliff opened up about the decision to release it on PS4, citing the much bigger user base as the primary reason.

We only had so many resources at the time. Arjan (Brusse, Bosskey co-founder) made the case because the install base on PS was bigger.” 

While the PS4 install base may trump the Xbox One, Cliff could've banked on his reputation and the console's user base which is more welcoming of competitive shooters like Halo and Gears of War. The now-retired game dev made a followup tweet acknowledging this.

“When people follow your career from a beloved series such as Gears on Xbox mighta made sense to put the new game on said console.”

Hindsight is 20/20 of course, but thinking back on it, LawBreakers could still be around with Microsoft's support thanks to tools like Xbox Game Pass. Sadly, the FPS shut down its servers in September 2018 just a year after release.