In May 2016, Gearbox, the studio behind Borderlands, released the first-person shooter Battleborn for PC, PS4, and Xbox One. The game introduced players to a quirky cadre of heroes: there were mushroom creatures, emo birds, or crazed penguins. The high-quality produced shooter with unique heroes flopped badly. The former head of 2K now explains what went wrong and what Overwatch has to do with it.

What kind of game was Battleborn?

• Battleborn was a weird game: it was a hero shooter with a cult-humor science fiction setting: an evil empire was destroying all the stars in the universe, only a coalition of heroes wanted to save the last star, Solus.
• Players could play a PvE campaign where you were constantly texted and insulted via voice chat completely over the top.
• But there was also a PvP variant, similar to Overwatch.

How did the game go? Like Evolve, the previous “big hit from 2k”, Battleborn fared really badly after release:

• The game only got 69% on Metacritic, which is pretty weak
• On Steam it started out rather mediocre with 12,000 players on average, dropped down to 660 game within a few months
• The developer Gearbox confessed early on: The game was not selling well, but they still wanted to save it. But even a “free trial” in June 2017 couldn’t stop the end. In October 2017, the game went into maintenance mode – in 2021, the servers closed completely.

Activision Blizzard spent 10 times more money than us

That’s what the boss says went wrong: In an interview with GameSpot Christoph Hartmann explains the problems, he was the head of publisher 2K at the time.

For Hartmann, it boils down to the fact that Battleborn got into a direct duel with Overwatch from Activision Blizzard and went down there without a chance.

They made the mistake of putting all their cards on the table too early.

In retrospect, the boss is annoyed that Battleborn was presented so early, already at E3 2014, which he now sees as a stupid mistake:

We were so stupid to announce the game too early. We showed it at E3, way too early, years before release. We explained the whole world, explained what we were doing, and then we couldn’t deliver for ages. Activision Blizzard put 10 times more money into marketing than we did. We did a little bit, but clearly not as much as Overwatch.

At the time, info on Battleborn was constantly mixed in with info on other hero shooters

That’s what’s behind it: Hartmann explains exactly the problem with Battleborn back then: the game was introduced early and looked interesting: But there was no continuous marketing campaign for the game, instead you heard something every now and then, but quickly forgot about it.

Somehow it felt like Battleborn kept disappearing completely from gamers’ consciousness, only to return for a brief moment: “Oh, there was that too, right.”

The marketing for Battleborn mixed in the minds of gamers with information about a number of other “hero shooters” that also emerged between 2014 and 2016, most notably Overwatch.

Players were constantly asking themselves, “What is this Battleborn again?” They had a hard time distinguishing between Battleborn, Paladins, Lawbreakers, Paragon, and Gigantic – all somehow similar games, with a cast of exciting heroes. All shooters, all somehow played in an arena – all were games that looked interesting and vied for attention.

Ultimately, Activision Blizzard then overran the competition with the huge and great campaign around Overwatch – Battleborn was without a chance:

• Battleborn was released on May 3, 2016
• Overwatch appeared on May 24, 2016

Battleborn could only lose this duel, especially since they hadn’t managed to really make it clear to all interested parties in the 3 years beforehand what kind of game you have and that it’s actually pretty cool.

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