After just six months, Ubisoft decided to pull the plug on XDefiant.
As announced by Ubisoft, the free-to-play FPS XDefiant will shut down even though the game just launched in the middle of this year.
As it seems, we’re living in a time where your beloved live service game could be taken from you every single day. After the disastrous ending of Concord, Ubisoft now decided to end the support of one of their games.
Even though XDefiant was just released in May of this year, Ubisoft already announced the end of development and support of the free-to-play team-based shooter. In a closed Beta from last year, the game was praised by more than 1 million players – but it seems like the game still couldn’t meet Ubisoft’s expectations.
The game is already no longer accepting new players and will completely shut down its servers in June of 2025.
After a delayed launch, the game was played by more than 10 million players in the first two weeks and back then, according to Ubisoft, “outperformed expectations thanks to acquisition and strong average revenue per session day”.
Unfortunately, it seems like the game couldn’t keep that number up and dropped below 20,000 current players.
Season 3 content and refunds
In their statement, Ubisoft explain:
The game will remain available to all players who joined XDefiant before December 3rd, 2024. All functionalities, including progression, events, rewards, and achievements, will continue to be available until June 3rd, 2025.
Season 3 of the game will still be launched as planned and everybody who purchased the “Ultimate Founders Pack”, VC or DLC in the last month will receive a refund.
Closing production studios as well
Similar to the end of Firewalk Studios’ Concord, the shutdown comes with closings and job losses. As stated by Ubisoft, the “difficult consequences” of this will lead to “the closing of our San Francisco and Osaka production studios and to the ramp down of our Sydney production site, with 143 people departing in San Francisco and 134 people likely to depart in Osaka and Sydney”.
Let’s hope that this won’t become the new normal with live service games that can’t meet the publisher’s expectations – for our entertainment as well as for the sake of the people working on said games.
What's your opinion on that case? What do you think about Ubisoft’s decision to shut down the game and the developing studio?
