Boss Key’s Radical Heights is the latest game to take a stab at dethroning immensely popular battle royale games Fortnite: Battle Royale and PUBG. Co-founder of Boss Key, Cliff “CliffyB” Bleszinski, is apparently having some issues with Epic Games, his former employer and the studio behind Fortnite. In a tweet Friday, he implored Epic Games to stop trying to hire away the team working on Radical Heights.
Bleszinski didn’t go into too much detail on what exactly the situation he was referring to entailed, but he alleged that Epic Games had tried to poach at least one of his employees. If so, this wouldn’t be the first time Epic had claimed some of Boss Key’s talent. In the wake of the failure of Lawbreakers, Boss Key Productions Co-Founder Arjan Brussee left in December to return to Epic Games to work on a secret project.
Hey @epicgames, could you please stop trying to hire away my team? We just launched @Radical_Heights on #UE4 and are really happy with how it’s going. pic.twitter.com/pe2DoZNuRq
— Cliff Bleszinski (@therealcliffyb) April 13, 2018
Radical Heights just released on Steam Early Access (X-Treme Early Access according to Boss Key), and the game is far from complete. With how far the game has to go before it reaches anywhere near the polish of Fortnite (still an early access title) or PUBG (plays like an early access title), Boss Key can ill afford to lose any of its personnel.
Boss Key recently stated that it would be too expensive to continue to support Lawbreakers, even after converting it to a free-to-play model, so it’s likely that the studio’s budget is stretched thin as it is. Whether or not Epic Games is actually trying to steal anyone away from the studio, it’s likely that Radical Heights needs to succeed for them to stay in business. With so much internal pressure to perform, it wouldn’t take much external pressure (i.e., poaching employees) to put Boss Key in a predicament.
