XDefiant, Ubisoft’s free-to-play Call of duty rival, has missed the publisher’s expectations since launching in May — that much CEO Yves Guillemot admitted during a recent financial call. But are there plans to shut the game down? Not so, its chief developer has insisted.
Rumors began circulating this week that support for XDefiant could come to an end after Season 4, which closes out XDefiant’s Year 1 roadmap, if its player count failed to improve. Ubisoft has yet to announce player numbers or revenue figures for XDefiant, with Guillemot promising to say more at the end of October.
Now, XDefiant executive producer Mark Rubin, who works at Ubisoft’s San Francisco development studio, has responded to those rumors, insisting the company does not plan to shut the game down after Season 4.
However, in-line with Guillemot’s comments, Rubin — who was an executive producer on Call of Duty before making the switch to Ubisoft — admitted player numbers are down. This, Rubin said, was because Ubisoft has done “very little marketing” as it works to improve the game. Once XDefiant is in “a better place”, the marketing push will begin, Rubin said.
“To be crystal clear there are NO plans to shut down after Season 4,” Rubin tweeted. “I’ve literally been in meetings as of last week to discuss our Year 2 plans. But, right now we are super focused on improving the technical experience (which includes netcode) and adding more content for Seasons 3 & 4.
“We have done very little marketing so yes our numbers are down but that is just to give the team the time to get the game in a better place before we do bigger spends on marketing to bring new players to the game and to bring back players that have left.”
XDefiant launched into the brutal live service shooter market at a time when it had already claimed a number of high-profile victims. Rocksteady’s Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League flopped to the tune of $200 million after Starbreeze’s Payday 3 suffered a disastrous launch last year. Since then, things have only got more difficult, with Sony’s Concord going down as one of the biggest PlayStation disasters of all time.
Meanwhile, Ubisoft has endured an awful year with the aforementioned disappointing return from XDefiant and, most recently, Star Wars Outlaws. It delayed Assassin’s Creed Shadows into 2025 following poor sales of Outlaws, and its staff in France are currently on strike.
In its recent note to investors, Guillemot acknowledged that the company’s “second quarter fell short of expectations” and vowed to launch “a review aimed at further improving our execution.” He also addressed some of the cultural conversations happening around the company lately, which have intensified around Star Wars Outlaws and the upcoming Assassin’s Creed Shadows.
Things have got so bad at Ubisoft that its founding Guillemot family and shareholder Tencent are reportedly considering teaming up to take the company private following the collapse of its share price.
Meanwhile, Ubisoft has ditched Epic Games Store timed exclusivity for its PC games and gone back to day-one launches on Steam, a move clearly designed to boost flagging sales of its games. Ubisoft has yet to announce a Steam launch for XDefiant, but it feels like a certainty at this point.
Wesley is the UK News Editor for IGN. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. You can reach Wesley at wesley_yinpoole@ign.com or confidentially at wyp100@proton.me.
