XDefiant Director Exits Gaming, Cites Ubisoft's Lack of Marketing

XDefiant's servers were taken offline on Tuesday, June 3rd, just over a year after Ubisoft's free-to-play arena shooter launched. Ubisoft gave its competitor to Call of Duty only four months before announcing it would end support. Nearly half of the development team lost their jobs as Ubisoft implemented sweeping cuts at its San Francisco and Osaka studios.

Producer Mark Rubin, who headed the game's development after previously working on the Call of Duty series at Activision, described it as a "sad day" in a detailed statement posted on X/Twitter earlier today. After thanking his colleagues for creating a "truly fun and excellent game," he revealed his decision to "leave the industry" permanently.

"In case not everyone is aware, the entire XDefiant team was laid off at the end of last year, and I know many have since moved on to other studios, which is fantastic. I hope those still searching find new opportunities soon," Rubin wrote.

"As for me, I’ve chosen to step away from the industry to focus more on family, so you won’t see me working on another game. I remain deeply passionate about the shooter genre and hope someone else can carry the torch I aimed to hold—creating games that genuinely value players, treat them with respect, and listen to their feedback."

Rubin noted the team achieved "remarkable" progress with "very limited marketing," stating that despite minimal advertising, XDefiant "still achieved the fastest player acquisition in the first few weeks for any Ubisoft title" solely through word-of-mouth.

"However, with little to no marketing, especially post-launch, we struggled to attract new players after the initial surge," he added, pointing out that Ubisoft's in-house game engine "wasn't built for what [XDefiant] aimed to accomplish."

"We faced additional challenges that we tried to be open about. A major one was the overwhelming technical debt from using an engine not suited for our needs, without the engineering resources to fix it. I personally believe proprietary engines are no longer the valuable investment they once were and often fall behind leading engines like Unreal.

"This technical debt included persistent netcode problems that we couldn't resolve given the underlying architecture," he continued. "For players with stable, reliable internet connections, the game performed well, but even minor network inconsistencies caused the engine to falter, leading to a poor experience. Typically, games can handle brief network hiccups, but this was a significant weakness for XDefiant."

XDefiant Gameplay Screenshots

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Rubin also expressed regret over the insufficient resources for content creation.

"Another challenge was securing the right resources to produce game content. In my view, what we delivered by Season 3 wasn't even enough for a full launch. There were exciting features planned for Seasons 4 and 5 that would have rounded out the game as I envisioned it from the start. Everyone involved—developers, HQ leadership, and others—had the right intentions, but we simply lacked the momentum to sustain a free-to-play title long-term."

In October 2024, Ubisoft assured everyone it wasn't closing XDefiant, only to announce its shutdown a few weeks later. We felt XDefiant had solid foundations, but "conflicting ideas and mechanics prevented it from distinguishing itself in a crowded shooter market." We ultimately gave it a "Good" score of 7.