
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!
Surprised to hear that XDefiant is shutting down already? Let us know in the comments section below.
[source x.com]
Comments 22
Typical Ubisoft they kill something original and fresh, but hey we have another Assassins Creed coming.
I hope those who lost their job find somewhere that appreciates them.
It's a shame they couldn't sell this to CoD players who really hate BO6's omnimovement.
I have to assume the free to play shooter Market is "full" now thanks to all the forever games eating up all the customers.
Doesn't surprise me one bit, the game felt so off.
Ubi desperately need to get back to the drawing board.
And on another note despite playing it I didn't even know it didn't have sbmm
And another one gone, another one gone, another one bites the dust!
Even at Ubisoft alone i'm losing track of how many cracks they've had at the FPS live service shooters.
I remember when Ubisoft used to make fresh, exciting games.
Free to play games like this need a hook to keep going or something unique up against huge free to play games like Fortnite and the like your very likely to fail
In other news: water is wet.
It was always going to happen; Ubisoft has done it at least twice before. And like @abe_hikura said, the live-service shooter space is oversaturated and it will take a lightning in a bottle situation for a new game to truly take off. Thing is, does Ubisoft try again? I would bet money on it.
It's sad to see one of the last big developers in San Francisco being closed down. They're the ones who'll feel the pain not the executives who keep on shovelling money into more and more failing live services.
I worry as the next game from Remedy is going to be an online multiplayer FPS set in the Control universe. Trying cash in on the success of smaller indie titles that have used the SCP lore to make squad based FPS games. If that one flops then that's going to impact a great studio who make inventive story driven single player titles.
What a shame, I love the game
I enjoyed the game but it had dodgy hit detection and not a lot of content so can't say I'm surprised. I was going to go back for season 3 but not much point now.
We knew that once Call of Duty released, Xdefiant would be history.
As long as Splinter Cell gets released, I don't care.
So many games these days and with Fortnite and COD still utterly dominant, it's a wonder other companies are still throwing large amounts of money at this genre. There is room for less popular games of course but they should be made with the appropriate budget and market research, at least you'd think so. As for Ubisoft, they're clearly better at single player titles although I'd argue there is room for something like a new Division and/or Rainbow Six installment.
I wonder how Skull & Bones is faring... I wouldn't be surprised if it's the next one to bite the dust.
@Tasuki more like typical any business? Kill the thing that doesn't sell, keep making the thing that sells.
I think the people you should be directing your contempt to are the people buying and not buying the games, they are ultimately the ones who decide what gets made. And I say this as someone whose last Assassins Creed game was the first one and I think the last Ubisoft game I liked was From Dust.
At this point I am ok with UbiSoft as a whole just closing shop
@Gabrielmpf
It bit the dust at launch
I just wish this would send the signal to stop competing in this space and make something that’s built to last, y’know, like singleplayer games. It never does.
@Tasuki Yeah, let’s bemoan the singleplayer franchise that’s still for the most part, an original concept…
C’mon don’t be salty. I know y’all get mad when something gets too many release (subjective) but I’d be more concerned at the amounts of money that gets thrown and wasted on games designed to steal attention and chain people to grinds.
It’s a solid game that just didn’t have much personality to it and came out right before the biggest CoD in probably a decade. It felt really good to handle but I just don’t see a reason to play it over Black Ops 6. Granted, I don’t play a lot of online games these days.
The "COD killer" didn't last too long.
The stupid thing is all these companies trying a free-to-play game and expecting it to IMMEDIATELY get Fortnite money. Even they had to slave away and throw multiple hail mary's to get to that level. Hell, Epic/Fortnite had to grovel out of court with PlayerUnknown/Bluehole over a breach of contract.
You need to aim low with your expectations and budget accordingly, and work towards going higher. I don't know why every company fails to understand that, except maybe Hi-Rez, though they've been nosediving hard as of late. (RIP Realm Royale)
Nothing really distinguished it.
Also, the title is hard to even remember.
Can any industry survive when the consumer can wait out for a 75% sale than buy day 1 … Ubisoft has not figured this out yet…
The whole industry is in trouble as there is only so much market share and our backlogs are full and we will only buy what we really want….
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