Although the release of the free-to-play online shooter XDefiant took place only in the spring of this year, Ubisoft has already announced the end of support and the closing of the servers. Not only they will close, but also two Ubisoft studios — hundreds of company employees will lose their jobs.
Although the release of the free-to-play online shooter XDefiant took place only in the spring of this year, Ubisoft has already announced the end of support and the closing of the servers. Not only they will close, but also two Ubisoft studios — hundreds of company employees will lose their jobs.
As before the battle royale Hyper Scape, high hopes were placed on XDefiant: last year, Ubisoft announced more than 1 million players in closed beta testing, writes The Verge. But like Hyper Scape, this game will also disappear quickly. As of December 3rd, the project is no longer accepting new players and plans to shut down the servers completely in June next year.
Despite the delayed launch, Ubisoft said XDefiant reached more than 10 million players in its first two weeks and «exceeded expectations with acquisitions and strong average revenue per session day.» However, the company could not maintain this momentum, and in the fall of this year there were rumors of problems. According to insiders, the number of concurrent players on all platforms has fallen below 20,000.
«The game will remain available to all players who joined XDefiant until December 3, 2024. All features, including development, events, rewards, and achievements, will be available until June 3, 2025», — Ubisoft announced. Season 3's planned content will still be released, and the company will issue a refund to anyone who purchased the Ultimate Founders Pack, as well as players who purchased in-game currency and DLC within the last month.
This closure also comes with job losses. According to Ubisoft, the «severe effects» lead to «the closure of production studios in San Francisco and Osaka, as well as reductions in the production site in Sydney: 143 people are being laid off in San Francisco and 134 people are likely to be laid off in Osaka and Sydney.»
XDefiant is a free-to-play multiplayer arena shooter that brings together several Ubisoft game franchises. The factions and operatives that users can play as are taken from titles such as Far Cry, Ghost Recon, Splinter Cell, The Divison and Watch Dogs. XDefiant game maps also link to these games.
«This is Ubisoft’s first Nightingale game! I am infinitely grateful to the company, the project, and the leadership of the Ukrainian studio for the opportunity to realize this!», — Andriy Mostovy, Project Lead at Ubisoft Kyiv, who worked on XDefiant, wrote in the spring.
In the autumn of this year, the managing director of Ubisoft Ukraine, Olga Sendzyuk, talked about the expropriation of the company’s Ukrainian offices, the impact of piracy, Ukrainian localization and the role of game development in Ukrainian IT.
«Unfortunately, the number of players who have chosen the Ukrainian language in XDefiant is very small, although we have put a lot of effort into high-quality localization», — said Sendzyuk. According to her, the localization required the support of many Ubisoft teams, as well as «significant participation of Ukrainian studios.»
«It’s not sad that it’s ending. I’m happy that it happened!», — Andriy Mostovy commented on the closure of XDefiant on the X social network (Twitter).
