Summary

  • XDefiant, Ubisoft's attempt to rival Call of Duty, is being shut down just six months after its initial release.
  • Executive producer Mark Rubin announced the shutdown on Twitter, with refunds promised for Founder's Pack buyers and recent purchases.
  • Ubisoft San Francisco, developer of XDefiant, is also being closed, along with Ubisoft Osaka, as up to 177 people are expected to lose their jobs.

XDefiant, the game that Ubisoft had intended to be a real rival to Activision's Call of Duty series, is being shut down just six months after launch. This comes after a consistently decreasing number of players and reports that Ubisoft has given the developers a timeline on how long they had to improve their numbers.

This news was first announced by XDefiant executive producer Mark Rubin, who announced on Twitter that the game will be shut down, and that XDefiant is no longer accepting new downloads or player registrations. Plans to release all the content promised for Season 3 are still going ahead, though a date has yet to be determined, and the game's servers will be fully shut down on June 3, 2025.

For those that purchased a Founder's Pack, Rubin explains that they'll be getting full refunds, as well as any player that made a purchase in the game over the past 30 days. Rubin explains that these refunds should go through automatically in roughly eight weeks from now.

XDefiant Developer Ubisoft San Francisco Is Also Being Shut Down

Alongside this news, it's also being reported by GameFile's Stephen Totilo that XDefiant developer Ubisoft Francisco is also being shuttered, along with Ubisoft Osaka. Totilo has claimed that up to 177 people are expected to lose their jobs, with half of the team that worked on XDefiant moving on to other projects within Ubisoft.

It's not quite Concord levels of swiftness, but this shutdown comes just 6 months after the release of XDefiant, and several attempts from Ubisoft to coax more players into the game. The release of Call of Duty: Black Ops 6, the series the game was eventually supposed to compete with, could possibly have played a part in the game's rapid downfall, though only Ubisoft itself will know for sure.

XDefiant Like Follow Followed FPS Systems OpenCritic Reviews Top Critic Avg: 70/100 Critics Rec: 51% Released May 21, 2024 ESRB T For Teen due to Mild Language, Violence Developer(s) Ubisoft San Francisco Publisher(s) Ubisoft Engine Snowdrop Multiplayer Online Multiplayer, Local Multiplayer Cross-Platform Play PC, PS5 & Xbox Series X|S

XDefiant is a competitive online shooter that brings together several IPs under the Ubisoft banner, from Watch Dogs to its many Tom Clancy games.

Genre(s) FPS Powered by Expand Collapse