XDefiant‘s servers went darkish on Tuesday, June 3, a bit of 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 will discontinue assist. Nearly half the crew 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 right this moment. After thanking his co-workers for making a “actually enjoyable and terrific recreation,” he introduced he is determined to “go away the trade” for good.
“In case everybody doesn’t know, the crew 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 wanting, that they discover one thing rapidly,” Rubin wrote.
“As for me, I’ve determined to go away the trade 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 in regards to the shooter area and hope that another person can decide 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 take heed to what they must say.”
Rubin mentioned the crew made “exceptional” progress regardless of “little or no advertising and marketing,” 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 and marketing, 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 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 have been doing, and we didn’t have the engineering assets to ever appropriate that. I do personally suppose that in-house engines are usually not the dear funding that they was once, 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 resolve given the structure we have been coping with,” he added. “And so, for a lot of gamers with strong 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’d have a foul expertise. Usually, it’s best to be capable of climate these dangerous moments in your community. However this was a serious problem with XDefiant.”
Rubin additionally lamented the shortage of assets to make content material.
“One other problem we had was having the suitable assets 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 will have accomplished the sport in a means 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 suitable place, however we simply didn’t have the fuel to go the space for a free-to-play recreation.”
In October 2024, Ubisoft insisted it wasn’t shutting XDefiant down, then introduced it will be shutting XDefiant down only a few weeks later. We thought the basics of XDefiant have been good, however “conflicting concepts and mechanics cease it from standing above a crowded shooter discipline.” 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 marketing consultant with 15+ years expertise working with a number 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.