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CliffyB says LawBreakers failed because he and it were too woke

Gears of War creator Cliff ‘CliffyB’ Bleszinski has decided his last project, LawBreakers, failed because he and it were too “woke”.

“Ever since [Boss Key Productions] closed I’ve been wracking my brain what I could have done differently,” the now-retired Bleszinski said in a new Instagram post. “Pivot HARD when the juggernaut of Overwatch was announced. Been less nice with my design ideas and more of a dictator with them.

“One big epiphany I had was that I pushed my own personal political beliefs in a world that was increasingly divided.

“Instead of the story being ‘this game looks neat’ it became ‘this is the game with the ‘woke bro’ trying to push his hackey politics on us with gender neutral bathrooms.’ Instead of ‘these characters seem fun’ it was ‘this is the studio with the CEO who refuses to make his female characters sexier.’ Instead of ‘who am I going to choose’ it became “white dude shoehorns diversity in his game and then smells his own smug farts in interviews’ instead of just letting the product … speak for itself.

“It’s okay to be political when your company or studio is established for great product FIRST. But we were unproven and I regret doing it. (This will be quite the doozy of a chapter in the upcoming memoir.)”

For what it’s worth, we tried out LawBreakers and considered it a derivative, run-of-the-mill shooter that was far inferior to the likes of Overwatch, Fortnite and Apex Legends, not because it was too woke.

If anything, CliffyB’s post seems designed to rile people up and also plug his upcoming memoir, so let’s leave this at that.

Did you try out LawBreakers, and if so, did you think it wasn’t treated fairly?


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Steve Wright

Steve's the owner of this very site and an active games journalist nearing twenty (TWENTY!?!) years. He's a Canadian-Australian gay gaming geek, ice hockey player and fan. Husband to Matt and cat dad to Wally and Quinn.