Ubisoft discontinues development on free-to-play shooter XDefiant
Ubisoft has announced that they will cease development of XDefiant. This is their free-to play first-person shooting game. Half of the XDefiant global team will now be moving to other Ubisoft roles. This decision will also lead to the closure of the San Francisco, Osaka, and Sydney production sites. 143 employees in San Francisco are expected to leave and 134 in Osaka or Sydney. For players, it also means that the game will shut down in June 2025. Ubisoft has announced that new downloads and registrations for players will no longer available. Ubisoft will refund those who purchased an Ultimate Founder’s Pack, as well as those who made a purchase in the last 30 days. 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 surpassed 5 million players in its first month and grew to 15. But it seems that not enough players bought items to cover the increasing costs. DeWaubert wrote in a letter to her staff: “Despite a promising start, the passionate work of the team, and devoted fans, we have not been able, in the long term, to attract and retain sufficient players to compete in the highly competitive free-to play FPS market.” The game has not yet achieved the level of success that would allow for further investment. We are therefore announcing its sunsetting.”
The laid-offs will be hard on San Francisco, Osaka, and Sydney. Ubisoft’s critics claim that the company is too big and has too many employees. Management has only just begun to tackle this problem, which has been years in the making. Skull & Bones’ poor performance, Star Wars: Outlaws’, and Assassin’s creed: shadows’ postponement until 2025 didn’t help.
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. Season 3 will be released in the future (exact dates TBD), and servers will continue to operate until June 3, 2025. All players who have made purchases in the past 30 days will receive a full refund. 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. From the beginning, it was a huge challenge. We were not only trying to shake things up by removing Skill Based Matchmaking (SBMM), but also reintroducing a more “old school” arcade shooter. In addition, we were 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. It takes a while for many free-to-play titles to gain traction and become profitable. Ubisoft, and the team working on the game, were willing to take a long road until recently. Unfortunately, it became impossible to continue the journey. This game has been my passion for many years. I understand that not every challenge leads to success, but I want to acknowledge all the developers affected by this decision. They are all real people with real lives separate from ours, and each one has put so much passion into creating this game. And I hope they are proud of the work they have done. I’ll always be grateful and proud to have worked on such a great group! A team who really surpassed its weight class.
And the results they achieved are truly remarkable. When XDefiant was launched, the response of players was incredible. We broke our own records by launching the game faster than five million users. In the end, we had more than 15 million players playing the game. This is a great achievement, considering the difficulty of this genre. Thank you to the developers for putting their passion into this game. This “player first” mentality, along with respectful and non-toxic discussions between developers and users has been one the standout differences which made XDefiant 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! I am grateful for the amazing community that has developed around XDefiant. Stay in the loop! Subscribe to receive the latest news daily in your email.
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