XDefiant‘s servers went darkish on Tuesday, June 3, somewhat over a yr after Ubisoft’s free-to-play enviornment shooter was launched. Ubisoft gave its Call of responsibility rival simply 4 months earlier than confirming it might discontinue assist. Almost half the team lost their jobs as Ubisoft made a swath of cuts throughout its San Francisco and Osaka studios.
Producer Mark Rubin, who led improvement fo the sport having beforehand labored on the Call of Duty sequence at Activision, referred to as it a “unhappy day” in a prolonged assertion posted to X/Twitter earlier immediately. After thanking his co-workers for making a “actually enjoyable and terrific recreation,” he introduced he is determined to “depart the business” for good.
“In case everybody doesn’t know, the crew behind XDefiant was all let go on the finish of final yr and I do know many individuals have moved on to different studios, which is nice, and I hope that for all of these nonetheless wanting, that they discover one thing shortly,” Rubin wrote.
“As for me, I’ve determined to depart the business and spend extra time with my household so sadly you gained’t be listening to about me making one other recreation. I do care passionately concerning the shooter area and hope that another person can decide up the flag that I used to be attempting to carry and make video games once more that care concerning the gamers, deal with them with respect and pay attention to what they’ve to say.”
Rubin stated the crew made “exceptional” progress regardless of “little or no advertising,” claiming that regardless of a scarcity of promoting, XDefiant “nonetheless had the quickest acquisition of gamers within the first few weeks for a Ubisoft title” simply from word-of-mouth promotion.
“However sadly, with little to no advertising, particularly after launch, we weren’t buying new gamers after the preliminary launch,” he added, earlier than claiming Ubisoft’s in-house recreation engine “wasn’t designed for what [XDefiant] was doing.”
“We had different points, although, as nicely that we tried to be clear about. For one we had crippling tech debt utilizing an engine that wasn’t designed for what we had been doing, and we didn’t have the engineering sources to ever right that. I do personally assume that in-house engines should not the precious funding that they used to be, and they’re typically doomed to fall behind large engines like Unreal.
“This tech debt included the dreaded netcode points that we might simply not clear up given the structure we had been coping with,” he added. “And so, for a lot of gamers with stable community connections (in each pace and constant reliability) the sport performed nicely but when your connection had even the smallest quantity of inconsistency the engine simply couldn’t deal with it and you’d have a foul expertise. Usually, you ought to be in a position to climate these unhealthy moments in your community. However this was a serious subject with XDefiant.”
Rubin additionally lamented the shortage of sources to make content material.
“One other subject we had was having the precise sources to make content material for the sport. What we noticed at Season 3 wasn’t even sufficient content material in my thoughts for launch. There have been some actually cool options coming later in Season 4 or even 5 that might have accomplished the sport in a approach that I felt it ought to have been for launch. I can say everybody’s (devs, HQ management, and so on.) coronary heart was in the precise place, however we simply didn’t have the gasoline to go the space for a free-to-play recreation.”
In October 2024, Ubisoft insisted it wasn’t shutting XDefiant down, then introduced it might be shutting XDefiant down just some weeks later. We thought the basics of XDefiant had been good, however “conflicting concepts and mechanics cease it from standing above a crowded shooter subject.” We finally awarded it a “Good” ranking of 7.
Vikki Blake is a reporter for IGN, in addition to a critic, columnist, and advisor with 15+ years expertise working with some of the world’s greatest gaming websites and publications. She’s additionally a Guardian, Spartan, Silent Hillian, Legend, and perpetually Excessive Chaos. Discover her at BlueSky.