Ubisoft Shutting Down Call Of Duty Competitor After Executive Producer Swore It Wasn't Dying

Ubisoft has announced that XDefiant, its multiplatform free-to-play Call of Duty-like FPS, is shutting down in June despite the game’s executive producer saying that it wasn’t dying and was “doing well” in September.

XDefiant finally launched in May for consoles and PC following numerous delays and a well-received beta. Developed by Ubisoft San Francisco, XDefgiant came out of the gate with big launch numbers, positive reviews, and a solid amount of content. I enjoyed XDefiant, as it provided me with a fast-paced military arena shooter that wasn’t 160GB. But in August, it was reported that the game wasn’t making enough money and was hemorrhaging players. Ubisoft has now announced that XDefiant won’t be around for much longer.

On December 3, Ubisoft confirmed that starting today, new players won’t be able to download XDefiant or register an account for the shooter. Servers will remain active until June 3, 2025. The game will then shut down. Ubisoft says the plan is to still release XDefiant’s season 3 content in the near future.

Game File’s Stephen Totilo reports that Ubisoft is shutting down the San Francisco studio behind XDefiant as well as Ubisoft Osaka. It is also ramping down its Sydney team. Around 270 people are reportedly being laid off as a result of these shake-ups and half the XDefiant team is being moved to other projects.

Kotaku has contacted Ubisoft for comment, but the publisher declined and pointed to its official message on its website.

XDefiant’s boss confirms the shutdown

XDefiant’s executive producer, Mark Rubin, posted a lengthy message confirming the news and explaining that “until very recently,” Ubisoft was on board to keep supporting XDefiant in the hopes of it finding an audience and growing. However, Rubin says that “the journey became too much to sensibly continue.”

“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,” said Rubin.

“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.”

Previously, Rubin had pushed back on a report from Insider Gaming in August that claimed that Ubisoft leadership was losing confidence in the project and that by November, a decision about the game’s future would be reached.

“I just want to quickly address the status of the game. i.e. is the game dying. No, the game is absolutely not dying,” said Rubin in a September blog post about XDefiant.

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