Ubisoft discontinues development on free-to-play shooter XDefiant
Ubisoft announced that it will discontinue development on XDefiant, its free-to-play first-person shooter title. As a result, half of the XDefiant team worldwide will be transitioning to other roles within Ubisoft.
This decision also leads to the closing of the San Francisco and Osaka production studios and to the ramp down of the Sydney production site, with 143 people departing in San Francisco and 134 people likely to depart in Osaka and Sydney.
For players, this also means the game is shutting down in June 2025. Ubisoft said new downloads and player registrations will no longer be available. The company will still release Season 3 content in the near future (exact date TBD) and the servers will remain active until June 3, 2025. Those who purchased an Ultimate Founder’s Pack will get a refund, as will those who made a purchase in the last 30 days.
You can find a message from Mark Rubin, executive producer of XDefiant, here and from Marie-Sophie de Waubert, chief studios and portfolio officer, here.
It’s a sad outcome for the XDefiant folks who had high hopes of competing with Call of Duty. XDefiant quickly surpassed five million players at launch and grew to 15 million, but evidently not enough of those players were buying things in the game to offset the growing costs.
De Waubert said in her post to staff, “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.”
The layoffs in San Francisco, Osaka and Sydney will be tough for those cities. Ubisoft critics have said the company has too many employees, given its size, and management has only recently begun to address this challenge that was years in the making. It probably didn’t help that Skull & Bones underperformed, as did Star Wars: Outlaws, and Assassin’s Creed: Shadows was postponed until 2025.
Rubin’s statement is below:
Hello XDefiant Fans,
I am unfortunately here today to announce that XDefiant will be shutting down.
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 eight weeks of today and you can find more details on our official website, XDefiant.com.
A few years ago, Ubisoft and the SF Dev team embarked on a bold adventure to develop a new arcade shooter called XDefiant. It was from the start, an incredible challenge. Not only were we trying to shake up the genre by removing Skill-Based Matchmaking (SBMM) while bringing back a more “old-school” arcade shooter experience, but we were also diving into the high-risk, high-reward realm of free-to-play. And for that I want to applaud not only the dev team but also Ubisoft leadership for taking that chance!
Free-to-play, in particular, is a long journey. Many free-to-play games take a long time to find their footing and become profitable. It’s a long journey that Ubisoft and the teams working on the game were prepared to make until very recently. But unfortunately, the journey became too much to sensibly continue.
I am, of course, heartbroken to have to be writing this post. Yes, this game has been a personal passion for me for years and yes, I know that not all challenges lead to victory, but I also want to recognize all of the developers who are being affected by this closure. Each and every one of them is a real person with a real life separate from our own and they have all put so much of their own passion into making this game. And I hope that they can be proud of what they did achieve. I know that I will always be proud and grateful to have worked with such a great team! A team that really punched above its weight class.
And what they achieved is truly remarkable. The early response from players when XDefiant launched was amazing—we broke internal records for the fastest game to surpass five million users and in the end we had over 15 million players play our game! That is something to be extremely proud of, especially considering how tough this genre is. So, thank you to all of the developers who put their passion into making this game!
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.
To our players, THANK YOU! From the bottom of my heart, I want to express my deepest gratitude for the incredible community that has grown around XDefiant. Your passion, creativity, and dedication have inspired us every step of the way.
With the utmost of love and respect,
Mark Rubin, Executive Producer, XDefiant
