XDefiant’s servers went darkish on Tuesday, June 3, a little bit over a 12 months after Ubisoft’s free-to-play enviornment shooter was launched. Ubisoft gave its Name of obligation rival simply 4 months earlier than confirming it might discontinue help. Virtually half the staff misplaced their jobs as Ubisoft made a swath of cuts throughout its San Francisco and Osaka studios.
Producer Mark Rubin, who led growth fo the sport having beforehand labored on the Name of Responsibility sequence at Activision, known as it a “unhappy day” in a prolonged assertion posted to X/Twitter earlier as we speak. After thanking his co-workers for making a “actually enjoyable and terrific sport,” he introduced he is determined to “depart the business” for good.
“In case everybody doesn’t know, the staff behind XDefiant was all let go on the finish of final 12 months and I do know many individuals have moved on to different studios, which is nice, and I hope that for all of these nonetheless trying, 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 received’t be listening to about me making one other sport. I do care passionately in regards to the shooter house and hope that another person can choose up the flag that I used to be making an attempt to hold and make video games once more that care in regards to the gamers, deal with them with respect and hearken to what they should say.”
Rubin stated the staff 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 sport engine “wasn’t designed for what [XDefiant] was doing.”
“We had different points, although, as effectively 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 appropriate that. I do personally suppose that in-house engines usually are not the dear funding that they was, and they’re usually doomed to fall behind large engines like Unreal.
“This tech debt included the dreaded netcode points that we may simply not remedy given the structure we had been coping with,” he added. “And so, for a lot of gamers with stable community connections (in each velocity and constant reliability) the sport performed effectively but when your connection had even the smallest quantity of inconsistency the engine simply couldn’t deal with it and you’ll have a foul expertise. Usually, you must have the ability to climate these unhealthy moments in your community. However this was a significant concern with XDefiant.”
Rubin additionally lamented the shortage of sources to make content material.
“One other concern we had was having the correct 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 and even 5 that might have accomplished the sport in a manner that I felt it ought to have been for launch. I can say everybody’s (devs, HQ management, and so forth.) coronary heart was in the correct place, however we simply didn’t have the fuel to go the space for a free-to-play sport.”
In October 2024, Ubisoft insisted it wasn’t shutting XDefiant down, then introduced it might be shutting XDefiant down only a few weeks later. We thought the basics of XDefiant had been good, however “conflicting concepts and mechanics cease it from standing above a crowded shooter area.” We in the end awarded it a “Good” ranking of seven.
Vikki Blake is a reporter for IGN, in addition to a critic, columnist, and guide with 15+ years expertise working with a number of the world’s largest gaming websites and publications. She’s additionally a Guardian, Spartan, Silent Hillian, Legend, and perpetually Excessive Chaos. Discover her at BlueSky.
