10 Rivalries That Killed Video Games

In a similar sense as World of Warcraft has done for the MMORPG genre, Overwatch has modernly popularised the team-based FPS, managing to maintain its position of sovereignty through a myriad of fan-fuelled rivalries against opposing communities. Paladins, Battleborn, and Apex Legends have been a handful of the titles struck off by the community as Overwatch rip-offs - but none were perhaps as deserving of the title as LawBreakers.

Being almost entirely influenced by Blizzard Entertainment's latest franchise, LawBreakers - the 2017 FPS from Nexon - did attempt to develop upon the Overwatch-established formula by introducing assorted concepts to the genre, namely low gravity, but the game failed to take off as hoped, and eventually shut its servers just thirteen months into its shelf life.

What's shocking is that initial reviews positively favoured LawBreakers. It garnered a score of 76 on Metacritic, with other notable outlets praising the title with four-star reviews. Hosting a closed beta on Steam with 7,500 players, this dropped drastically by 40% during its open beta; upon launch, it dropped by 60%.

Game director Cliff Bleszinski did, however, state that player figures for PlayStation 4's copy of LawBreakers were significantly higher, though he refrained from specifics. He told GameSpot:-

"There is a situation where players look at numbers on Steam; that doesn't happen on PlayStation 4. I don't have the numbers in front of me, but you look at PC, [concurrent user] health versus PS4, PS4 is doing fine. People cough up 30 bucks and hop online and they don't overthink it."