Cliff Bleszinski, co-founder of Boss Key Productions and a major force behind the Gears of War franchise, announced in a tweet yesterday that Boss Key Productions is officially closing its doors.
At 2:19 PM Eastern Time yesterday, a Tweet was posted on Cliff Bleszinski’s Twitter account:
In the statement, Cliff Blezinski opens with the announcement that Boss Key Productions “…is no more.” He goes on to say:
Four years ago I set out to make a world class video game studio and I hired some of the best talent in the videogame industry. They worked tirelessly to produce quality products and, while we had our ups and downs, I’d like to think we had fun doing it. LawBreakers was a great game that unfortunately failed to gain traction, and, in a last ditch attempt we scrambled to do our take on the huge battle royale genre with Radical Heights which was well-received, however, it was too little too late.
Cliff Blezinski reports that he personally will be taking the time off to focus on himself and his family, as well as his old Aussie Teddy. In addition, “…servers for Radical Heights will remain up for the near future.”
Boss Key Productions was founded in April 2014 by former Epic Games employees Cliff Blezinski and Arjan Brussee. They released the shooter LawBreakers last year, but it was unable to find a solid audience. This was partially due to Blizzard’s huge success with Overwatch and partially due to the market oversaturation that follows a company hitting it rich with a new product. Brussee left the company in December of 2017, and he returned to Epic Games and worked on the mobile version of Fortnite. In what turned out to be a bit of a Hail Mary move, Boss Key Productions released the 80’s-themed battle royale Radical Heights last month in “X-TREME Early Access”. It’s free to play with microtransactions for buying cosmetic items, but it struggled to gain and keep player base, primarily due to being so rough you could use it to file your nails.