Xdfefiant's chief layoffs completely withdrew from the industry.
Blog Andrew Joseph 05 Jun , 2025 0
xdeterIt's been over a year since the release of Ubisoft's free arena shooter on Tuesday, June 3. Ubisoft gave its mission competitors before confirming that this would stop supporting. Almost half of the team lost their jobs Ubisoft has made a series of cuts in studios in San Francisco and Osaka.
Producer Mark Rubin leads the development of the Call of Duty series that the game has worked on Activision, which he calls a “Sad Day.” X/Twitter Earlier today. After thanking his colleagues for making “really fun and great games,” he announced his decision to “get out of the industry” forever.
“If everyone doesn't know, late last year, the team behind Xdefiant was let go, and I know a lot of people have moved to other studios, which is great, and I hope for everyone who is still looking for, they'll find something soon.”
“As for me, I decided to leave the industry and spend more time with my family, so unfortunately you won't hear another game from me. I'm really passionate about shooting space and hopefully someone else can pick up the flag I'm trying to carry and carry the game again and make them care about the players again, treat them, respect them and listen to what they have to say.”
Rubin said the team made “significant” progress despite the lack of marketing, claiming that despite the lack of advertising, Xdefiant was “the fastest-acquisition player for Ubisoft titles in its first few weeks” and “a promotion from word of mouth.”
“But unfortunately there is little marketing, especially after the launch, we didn't get new players after the initial launch,” he added.
“We have other issues, though, and we try to be transparent. For an engine that is not designed for what we do, our technical debt is paralyzed, and we don't have the engineering resources to correct this. I personally do think that internal engines are not the valuable investment they used to be, and that they often lag behind large machines like unrealistic ones.
“This technical debt includes a terrible web code problem, which we can't solve given the architecture we're dealing with,” he added. “So, the game works well for many players with a stable network connection (with speed and consistent reliability), but if your connection has even minimal inconsistencies, the engine can't handle it, and you'll have a bad experience. Often, you should be able to spend these bad moments on the network. However, that's the main problem with Xdefiant.”
Rubin also lamented the content for the lack of resources.
“The other issue we had was having the right resources to make the game content. What we saw in Season 3 wasn't even enough to launch. Later in Season 4 there were some really cool features that came out in Season 4 and even 5 times that would have done the game the way I felt like it was launching. I could say everyone (Devs, HQ's leadership, etc.), but we were just in a good position but were free to play, which was a distance of distance.
October 2024, Ubisoft insists it doesn't close xDefiantand then announce the meeting Close XDEFIANT in a few weeks. We think Xdefiant's fundamentals are good, but “contradictory ideas and mechanisms prevent it from standing above the crowded field of shooters”. We finally granted it “OK” Level 7.
Vikki Blake is an IGN journalist, as well as a critic, columnist and consultant with over 15 years of experience working with some of the world's largest gaming websites and publications. She is also a guardian, a Spartan, a quiet Hilan, a legend and a permanent chaos. Find her Bruceky.