The latest earnings call (via PCGamesN) from South Korean publisher Nexon has the company entirely writing off LawBreakers, the Boss Key Productions-made first-person shooter that many just haven’t taken a liking to.
Nexon’s CFO Shiro Uemura noted “we will not be accruing any other impairment loss pertaining to Lawbreakers in the future.” This means the publisher has completely written off the game from their balances, as the game reportedly saw lackluster sales, and lukewarm reception.
It’s worth mentioning Nexon didn’t say just how much money they lost on LawBreakers, they said the game “accounts for the majority” of their Q3 expenses, which in total came in at $32.6 million. That’s a pretty insane loss, leading us to believe the game really did perform badly.
Here’s where things get more interesting: Nexon is blaming the game’s failures on the popularity of PlayerUnknowns’ Battlegrounds. Umeura went on to explain:
“Our results in North America in the third quarter were below our outlook, mainly due to the sales from Lawbreakers being below our expectations. Lawbreakers is a unique FPS developed for core users. We had very high expectations for its launch; however, the timing of its launch turned out to be unfortunate, specifically the blockbuster PC online game PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds came out right about the same time, making the market environment very tough for first-person shooters in general and for Lawbreakers.”
LawBreakers is currently available for PC and PlayStation 4.