Boss Key Productions, the studio behind the recent battle royale Radical Heights and last year's Lawbreakers, is closing its doors.

If you ask Boss Key Productions, LawBreakers isn't dead yet. Talk to the game's most dedicated players, and some will tell you the online shooter is ready for the big dirt nap. And, unlikely as it may be, some are clinging to hope that it will one day rise from its ashes.

Just days after publishing a blog post announcing a shift away from its struggling first-person shooter LawBreakers, Cliff Bleszinski's studio Boss Key Productions has announced a new Battle Royale-style game called Radical Heights.

After trying a "slow and steady" approach to keeping its shooter LawBreakers fresh and considering a switch to free-to-play to boost profitability, Cliff Bleszinski's Boss Key Productions has announced that while it will "continue to support" LawBreakers, it's decided to "focus on other projects" going forward.

A recent mandate by Sony that requires new games being published for its platforms to be rated by the ESRB has created obstacles for physical versions of indie games. In at least one case it's led directly to the cancellation of a project that was already underway.

Despite constant attention from developer Boss Key Productions, LawBreakers continues to struggle with player counts. Recently, CEO and designer Cliff Bleszinski admitted it might take extreme measures to keep the title afloat, including a potential switch to a free-to-play model.

Boss Key Productions, headed by former Epic designer Cliff Bleszinski, has no plans to abandon LawBreakers any time soon. The developer's entry into the fast-growing collection of shooters aimed at the esports market had a solid launch, but despite a well-crafted product, has failed to sustain a healthy playerbase. Speaking with GameSpot, Bleszinski admitted that numbers could be better and is now embracing a slow-burn approach to build things up.

If you can get past the obnoxious packaging, Lawbreakers is surprisingly good fun.

Boss Key Productions' Lawbreakers launched on PlayStation 4 and PC this week. Mike Fahey and Patricia Hernandez got together to discuss their first few hours in Cliff Bleszinski's fast-paced take on the hero shooter.

Lawbreakers will officially launch on PlayStation 4 and PC August 8. Speaking during the PC Gaming Show at E3, Boss Key Productions' Cliff Bleszinski said the price will be $US29.99 ($40), "None of that $US60 ($80) multiplayer-only bullshit."

Video: Cliff Bleszinski and the team at Boss Key Productions are pulling out all the stop for Lawbreakers, a frantic first person shooter that's currently in closed alpha. What's it all about? I played a match and caused some mayhem. It turns out that breaking the law includes a ton of zero gravity action and sweet sword kills. And grappling hooks! Join me for the chaos in this video!

LawBreakers is being billed as an "adult take" on the 5v5 FPS genre. It wants to be the gritty yin to Overwatch's ultra-fluorescent yang and the design team are hoping that cosplayers will get behind this very different art style. There's just one problem: the majority of armour designs are nigh on impossible for the average cosplayer to pull off. Whoops.

This year's PC Gaming Show was neatly wedged between the Ubisoft and Microsoft conferences. But its presence was overlooked by many outlets and questions still remained as to whether it could shrug off the awkwardness of its inaugural year.

Partly in response, the show's organisers responded with a brisk 100 minutes of trailers, interviews and gameplay footage.

Given that other first-person shooters like Overwatch had forgone the potential in a free-to-play model, it was going to be interesting to see how Cliff Bleszinski's upcoming shooter, Lawbreakers, fared.

But the game's business model has now changed, with the company this morning announcing that they would be scrapping the zero cost of entry for a "digital premium model".

PAX South has been kicking along over the weekend and, as is customary for PAX, developers have been advertising their wares in interviews and the showroom floor. One of those developers was Cliff Bleszinski, who's been working with his team on the upcoming 5v5 shooter Lawbreakers.

The 5v5 shooter market is becoming surprisingly crowded, with Bethesda, Blizzard and Boss Key Productions all pitching into the same space. Bleszinski was asked about that directly in a new interview, and his reply was intriguing.

After revealing the basics about Lawbreakers earlier this week, the Gears of War designer and his team have lifted the lid on precisely what the game is all about.