Radical Heights Dev Boss Key Shuts Down One Month After New Game's Release

Boss Key Productions has announced it's shutting down. The developer responsible for LawBreakers and, more recently, Radical Heights, will cease operations, co-founder Cliff Bleszinski has announced. However, this won't mark an immediate end for its new battle royale game.

"As of today, Boss Key Productions is effectively no more," Bleszinski wrote in a message shared on Twitter. "Four years ago I set out to make a world class video game studio and I hired some of the best talent in the video game 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."

Bleszinski announced the formation of Boss Key in 2014, and LawBreakers--an arena shooter in the mold of Unreal Tournament or Quake 3 Arena--was later revealed as its debut title. Upon its release last summer, the game failed to attract many players, forcing Boss Key to scramble to regroup. A shift to a free-to-play model was discussed, although more recently the studio announced it would move the bulk of its efforts to a new game, Radical Heights, which attempted to capitalize on the tremendous success of Fortnite and PUBG.

The message recounts some of this, saying LawBreakers "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."

Radical Heights will apparently continue to operate for the time being, as the message says that servers "will remain up for the near future." A more specific time table for its shutdown was not outlined. At the time of this writing, the free-to-play game's Founder's Pack remains available for sale on Steam. [Update: The Founder's Pack has now been removed.]

While thanking fans for their support, Bleszinski left his future in question. "As for myself, I'm going to take some time off and reflect. I need to focus on myself and family as well as my Aussie, Teddy, who is slowly fading from us. Video games will forever be a part of who I am and I hope to make something new again someday, however, I need to withdraw and take this time."