Nexon writes off Lawbreakers, blames PUBG for game’s lack of impact

Nexon have written off the entire value of hero shooter Lawbreakers, claiming that PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds made the market environment tough for first-person shooters.

Lawbreakers was one of the highest profile failures in video games recent memory, a critically well-received game that struggled to find an audience on console or PC. In a Q&A session with their investors, picked up by PCGN, Nexon’s chief financial officer Shiro Uemura said: "we will not be accruing any other impairment loss pertaining to Lawbreakers in the future.”

While neither Uemura or Nexon revealed how much money the company lost on Lawbreakers, but did say that it accounted for the majority of their Q3 expenses, which their quarterly report puts at around $32.6m.

Impairment loss is the decrease in an asset’s net carrying value that exceeds its future potential cash flow, Effectively, Nexon has abandoned Lawbreakers and it’s all PUBG’s fault, according to Uemura.

"Our results in North America in the third quarter were below our outlook, mainly due to the sales from Lawbreakers being below our expectations." said Uemura.

"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.”

PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds launched on Steam’s Early Access platform in March, launching from early access on Steam in December, with an Xbox One PUBG release to the Xbox Preview Program in December.

Lawbreakers launched on the PC, Xbox One and PS4 in August.