XDefiant Chief Quits Industry Entirely, Claims Ubisoft's Doomed Call of Duty Rival Had 'Very Little Marketing' or 'The Right Resources to Make Content'

XDefiant's servers went acheronian connected Tuesday, June 3, a small implicit a twelvemonth aft Ubisoft's free-to-play arena shooter was released. Ubisoft gave its Call of work rival conscionable 4 months earlier confirming it would discontinue support. Almost fractional the squad mislaid their jobs arsenic Ubisoft made a swath of cuts crossed its San Francisco and Osaka studios.

Producer Mark Rubin, who led improvement fo the crippled having antecedently worked connected the Call of Duty bid astatine Activision, called it a "sad day" successful a lengthy connection posted to X/Twitter earlier today. After thanking his co-workers for making a "really amusive and terrific game," helium announced he's decided to "leave the industry" for good.

"In lawsuit everyone doesn’t know, the squad down XDefiant was each fto spell astatine the extremity of past twelvemonth and I cognize galore radical person moved connected to different studios, which is great, and I anticipation that for each of those inactive looking, that they find thing quickly," Rubin wrote.

"As for me, I’ve decided to permission the manufacture and walk much clip with my household truthful unluckily you won’t beryllium proceeding astir maine making different game. I bash attraction passionately astir the shooter abstraction and anticipation that idiosyncratic other tin prime up the emblem that I was trying to transportation and marque games again that attraction astir the players, dainty them with respect and perceive to what they person to say."

Rubin said the squad made "remarkable" advancement contempt "very small marketing," claiming that contempt a deficiency of advertising, XDefiant "still had the fastest acquisition of players successful the archetypal fewer weeks for a Ubisoft title" conscionable from word-of-mouth promotion.

"But unfortunately, with small to nary marketing, particularly aft launch, we weren’t acquiring caller players aft the archetypal launch," helium added, earlier claiming Ubisoft's in-house crippled motor "wasn't designed for what [XDefiant] was doing."

"We had different issues, though, arsenic good that we tried to beryllium transparent about. For 1 we had crippling tech indebtedness utilizing an motor that wasn’t designed for what we were doing, and we didn’t person the engineering resources to ever close that. I bash personally deliberation that in-house engines are not the invaluable concern that they utilized to be, and they are often doomed to autumn down large engines similar Unreal.

"This tech indebtedness included the dreaded netcode issues that we could conscionable not lick fixed the architecture we were dealing with," helium added. "And so, for galore players with coagulated web connections (in some velocity and accordant reliability) the crippled played good but if your transportation had adjacent the smallest magnitude of inconsistency the motor conscionable couldn’t grip it and you would person a atrocious experience. Normally, you should beryllium capable to upwind those atrocious moments connected your network. But this was a large contented with XDefiant."

Rubin besides lamented the deficiency of resources to marque content.

"Another contented we had was having the close resources to marque contented for the game. What we saw astatine Season 3 wasn’t adjacent capable contented successful my caput for launch. There were immoderate truly chill features coming aboriginal successful Season 4 oregon adjacent 5 that would person completed the crippled successful a mode that I felt it should person been for launch. I tin accidental everyone’s (devs, HQ leadership, etc.) bosom was successful the close place, but we conscionable didn’t person the state to spell the region for a free-to-play game."

In October 2024, Ubisoft insisted it wasn't shutting XDefiant down, past announced it would beryllium shutting XDefiant down conscionable a fewer weeks later. We thought the fundamentals of XDefiant were good, but "conflicting ideas and mechanics halt it from lasting supra a crowded shooter field." We yet awarded it a "Good" standing of 7.

Vikki Blake is simply a newsman for IGN, arsenic good arsenic a critic, columnist, and advisor with 15+ years acquisition moving with immoderate of the world's biggest gaming sites and publications. She's besides a Guardian, Spartan, Silent Hillian, Legend, and perpetually High Chaos. Find her astatine BlueSky.