The Daily Populous Thursday December 5th, 2024 morning edition
Authored by dexerto.com and submitted by BigT232

Just over six months from its full release, XDefiant is now confirmed to be shutting down. Executive Producer Mark Rubin confirmed the news on X (formerly Twitter), announcing servers will close on June 3, 2025.

After weeks of speculation regarding player count and ongoing support, XDefiant is officially on its way out. Support for Ubiosft’s FPS is being tapered off in the coming months, with refunds being offered for any players who purchased premium bundles in the past 30 days.

New downloads of the game will no longer be available, meaning only players with the game installed can continue grinding if they so choose. Season 3 will still roll out as planned, though no new content is prepared for the period beyond that.

“We regret to inform you that we are initiating the sunset process starting today,” a Ubisoft blog post outlined shortly after on December 3, 2024. While the game will remain playable through to June 3, 2025, no new players will be able to download the game and join in.

Meanwhile, any player who purchased the Ultimate Founders Pack, the most expensive cosmetic pack at launch, priced at $69.99 USD, will be issued a full refund. On top of that, any players who purchased digital currency or Season Passes in the last 30 days will also be fully refunded.

Acknowledging the game’s progress, Rubin expressed how proud he was of the development team for sticking to their guns. “[XDefiant] broke internal records for the fastest game to surpass 5 million users and in the end we had over 15 million players play our game,” he claimed on X.

Ubisoft XDefiant had plans extending through to Season 4 in 2025. Those plans will no longer come to fruition.

Of course, news of XDefiant’s demise comes just weeks after the most recent update from Rubin, who argued the game wasn’t going away anytime soon. “There are no plans to shut down after Season 4,” he claimed just weeks prior on October 16.

While admitting at the time, that “numbers [were] down,” Rubin remained adamant about long-term support for the FPS. At this stage, leakers had already unearthed all sorts of planned content, including crossovers with the likes of Assassin’s Creed, Splinter Cell, and more.

On the back of XDefiant’s end, Ubisoft studios around the globe have been impacted. Up to 277 employees are reportedly being laid off as Ubisoft closes its San Francisco and Osaka offices and ramps down its Sydney office too. Half of the remaining XDefiant team will be transitioned onto other projects, according to insider Stephen Totilo.

Ubisoft While Ubisoft claims XDefiant reached over 15 million players total, devs even admitted the daily active player count was dwindling as 2024 rolled on.

XDefiant was initially touted as a rival to Activision’s FPS juggernaut Call of Duty. Employing a number of former CoD developers and professional players alike, open communication was at the forefront of it all.

Built from the ground up as a free-to-play FPS, it had a turbulent development with multiple delays on the path to its early 2024 release. When the full game finally landed, it did so with a wide range of bugs and performance issues, but nonetheless struck a chord with a smaller audience.

In the months that followed, new content drops added Factions, maps, weapons, and expanded progression systems, while frequent updates continued to iron out the early kinks ranging from netcode problems to overpowered abilities (looking at you Spiderbot).

By the time servers close, XDefiant will have been live for a total of 378 days.

zaj89 on December 4th, 2024 at 00:52 UTC »

Wow that lasted all of what, like 6 months?

MrPoopybutthole4711 on December 4th, 2024 at 00:20 UTC »

There dies the next big "CoD-Killer"

Ijustlovevideogames on December 4th, 2024 at 00:17 UTC »

Surprising no one