Even though we had a fun time with Ubisoft's XDefiant when it launched as a free-to-play shooter back in May, we've been hearing rumours and speculation ever since that the game might be "dying" due a dwindling player base.
Plans to shut down XDefiant were denied as recently as two months ago, but unfortunately, Ubisoft has now officially made the decision to end the game. It's already been delisted on the Xbox Store, although the servers will remain live until June 3rd of 2025.
In a message on social media, it was explained that the free-to-play journey "became too much" to continue:
"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."
As mentioned, we've actually had a good time with XDefiant over the past few months, noting back at launch that it had established "a very promising start" and looked set to have a bright future ahead of it on Xbox and beyond.
There's no denying that its popularity has dwindled ever since though, so unfortunately all the years of work that went into its development are going down the drain after just six months. What a shame for the devs and the game's fans!