British MPs are comparing one another to Cliff Bleszinski's dead live-service FPS LawBreakers to score points as videogame debate comes to UK Parliament

(Image credit: Boss Key Productions)

Remember LawBreakers? I have to be honest: I didn't. Or rather, I didn't until the game was suddenly resurrected in—of all places—the UK Parliament.

If you suffer from the same defect of memory I do: LawBreakers was Cliff Bleszinski's ill-fated competitive FPS from 2017—the first game the developer made at his studio Boss Key Productions after he departed Epic. It was actually quite good, but that didn't stop it from meeting its final death just a year after it released.

Now it's been summoned again, in the same part of the UK Parliament that once played host to the trials of Saint Thomas More and King Charles I, and I can only imagine their spirits are humbled to share the venue with such august company. UK Members of Parliament took to Westminster Hall to have a natter about a petition to "Prohibit publishers irrevocably disabling videogames they have already sold." In other words, the goals of the Stop Killing Games campaign.

Ben Goldsborough, MP for South Norfolk, outed himself as a Victoria 2, Cities: Skylines, and Oddworld fan. Lib Dem MP Tom Gordon professed his Sims love. But the most baffling videogame cameo in the debate was, surely, LawBreakers, which was brought up by Labour's Mark Sewards—ostensibly to highlight a point about access to a game going away, but more realistically just so he could squeeze in a sick burn on his political opponents.

"Another example [of games being killed], which Ross [Scott, Stop Killing Games founder] gave me is LawBreakers—a game that I imagine would have been popular with certain Members of the previous Parliament." Do you hear that? That's the critical hit klaxon going off. Civil wars have been started in this country for less. By the time this article has gone live I'll likely have been conscripted to fight in The Anarchy 2.

Appropriately enough, Sewards' little aside garnered a few chortles from the assorted politicos, and he seemed very pleased with himself for the dig. It may have been lost on some of Parliament's older members, mind you.

Which specific examples of, ah, untoward behaviour Sewards is referencing by the UK's previous Conservative government aren't made clear, but it's likely he had in mind events like the 'Partygate' scandal that helped topple Boris Johnson as PM, or the failure of then-Chancellor Jeremy Hunt to declare luxury flats purchases to Companies House.

Sewards didn't just namecheck LawBreakers—though that's the only game he weaponised—he also referenced Babylon's Fall and Anthem as examples of games that went the way of the dodo and left players in the lurch.

Referencing the government's statement that it has no plans to intervene in the UK videogame market, Sewards said that he "cannot help but observe that what is happening in this space could be perceived as a breach of consumer protection under unfair trading regulations. Those regulations prohibit traders from hiding information that consumers need in order to make an informed choice, yet when consumers buy a game today, they are almost never told how long it will remain functional. Consumers are sold a one-time purchase, but the publisher reserves the right to terminate it at any time for any reason."

One of Josh's first memories is of playing Quake 2 on the family computer when he was much too young to be doing that, and he's been irreparably game-brained ever since. His writing has been featured in Vice, Fanbyte, and the Financial Times. He'll play pretty much anything, and has written far too much on everything from visual novels to Assassin's Creed. His most profound loves are for CRPGs, immersive sims, and any game whose ambition outstrips its budget. He thinks you're all far too mean about Deus Ex: Invisible War.

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