Ubisoft Shuts Down 'XDefiant' About A Month After Executive Producer Claimed Company Had "NO Plans To Shut Down"
Ubisoft announced it was shutting down XDefiant as well as closing multiple studios including in San Francisco and Osaka that were working on the game resulting in around 300 layoffs.
In a blog post written by Ubisoft’s Chief Studios and Portfolio Officer Marie-Sophie de Waubert, the company announced, “Despite an encouraging start, the team’s passionate work, and a committed fan base, we’ve not been able to attract and retain enough players in the long run to compete at the level we aim for in the very demanding free-to-play FPS market. As a result, the game is too far away from reaching the results required to enable further significant investment, and we are announcing that we will be sunsetting it.”
She then explained, “Concretely, that means that as of today, new downloads, player registrations and purchases will no longer be available. Season 3 will still launch, and the servers will remain active until June 3, 2025, out of appreciation for both our dev teams who worked on it and for XDefiant’s active players.”
Waubert then explained that not only was the company shutting down XDefiant, but it was closing its San Francisco and Osaka production studios.
She wrote, “Even if almost half of the XDefiant team worldwide will be transitioning to other roles within Ubisoft, this decision also leads to the closing of our San Francisco and Osaka production studios and to the ramp down of our Sydney production site, with 143 people departing in San Francisco and 134 people likely to depart in Osaka and Sydney.”
The game’s Executive Producer Mark Rubin provided more details about the game’s shuttering.
He revealed, “Starting today (December 3, 2024), new downloads and player registrations will no longer be available. We will still release our Season 3 content in the near future (exact date TBD) and the servers will remain active until June 3, 2025.”
“For those who purchased the Ultimate Founder’s Pack, you’ll receive a full refund. Players who made any purchases within the last 30 days will also be fully refunded. Those refunds should happen automatically within 8 weeks of today and you can find more details on our official website, XDefiant.com,” Rubin added.
Of note, Rubin did share that XDefiant “broke internal records for the fastest game to surpass 5 million users and in the end we had over 15 million players play our game!”
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Hypocritically, Rubin then declared, “If there’s one thing, I hope we can all take away from this experience, it’s the importance of open, honest communication between developers and players. This “player-first” mentality along with respectful, non-toxic conversations between developers and players has been one of the standout differences that made XDefiant so special. From my very first post about XDefiant, this was the vision I wanted to champion, and I hope it leaves a positive mark on how the game industry treats its players and communities.”
A little over a month ago, Rubin made it abundantly clear that there were “NO plans to shut down [XDefiant] after Season 4.”
He posted on X, “To be crystal clear there are NO plans to shut down after season 4. I’ve literally been in meetings as of last week to discuss our Year 2 plans.”
He continued, “But, right now we are super focused on improving the technical experience (which includes netcode) and adding more content for Seasons 3 & 4.”
However, he then admitted that player numbers are down, “We have done very little marketing so yes our numbers are down but that is just to give the team the time to get the game in a better place before we do bigger spends on marketing to bring new players to the game and to bring back players that have left.”
His post was in direct response from leaker Just4Leaks2 who claimed the game was dead and would be shut down after Season 4 because it just did not have enough players.
He wrote, “XDefiant is alredy Dead. Ubisoft research team is actively asking their tester to have another In-House test session and give/repeat their feedback.
He added, “Multiple sources told that its possible that the game will end its Support after season 4 if they cant get enough players.”
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And that rumor was not out of left field. During a Trading Update call back at the end of September, CEO Yves Guillemot admitted that the game was not performing to the company’s expectations.
When asked about the company’s poor sales performance in Q2, Guillemot said, “It mostly reflects the softer than expected sales for Star Wars Outlaws. We also had behind expectations for XDefiant, which we will give you a bit more detail at the end of October.”
A previous rumor from Tom Henderson at Insider Gaming at the end of August also noted the game was seeing “continuously declining player numbers and lack of player spending.”
He reported that one source informed him that “the game has been struggling to obtain 20,000 concurrent players across all its platforms.”
Another source shared, “They [Ubisoft] would probably be happy with that number.” This suggests that the concurrent player number counts are much lower than 20,000.
In fact, Henderson also shared that if the game does not turn things around by Season 3 it “risks losing its much-needed post-launch support.”
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Ubisoft addressed Henderson’s report in a blog post in the middle of September written by Rubin.
He wrote, “I just want to quickly address the status of the game. i.e. is the game dying? No, the game is absolutely not dying.”
He elaborated, “We know there are things we need to improve like Netcode/Hitreg and adding more content to progression, but the game is doing well. We just want it to do better.”
“And we do that by addressing the concerns of our community which has always been the plan. Ubisoft is very much behind us and has allocated more resources to the team in order for us to do that,” he stated.
To that point he revealed the game’s Year 1 roadmap which ends with Season 4.
More recently, despite Guillemot’s promise to address XDefiant at the of October during its First-Half 2024-2025 Earnings Figures report, he nor the company did any such thing.
In fact, one investor noted and asked, “You don’t mention XDefiant much in the release, how should we think about that? It’s obviously tailed off. Is this just another example or another case of this just not working, the games-as-a-service, sort of free-to-play variant? I know Rainbow Six is obviously incredibly successful, but should we chalk XDefiant up as another miss?”
Guillemot responded, “As we said a month ago, XDefiant is behind our expectations but the team is working and focusing on improving the heat registration element and improving the net code. And that is really the priority as we speak. Our games-as-a-service strategy remains core of what we want to do next. … Free-to-play games-as-service remains a core element of our [inaudible] strategy to the benefit of our big brands in the coming years.”
What do you make of XDefiant getting shut down by Ubisoft and nearly 300 people getting laid off?