XDefiant’s executive producer Mark Rubin claims that the free-to-play FPS is “not dying” and, in fact, has Ubisoft’s full support following a previous report that claimed otherwise and suggested the shooter didn’t have long to turn things around.
XDefiant finally launched in May for consoles and PC following numerous delays and a well-received beta. The free-to-play FPS developed by Ubisoft San Francisco came out strong at launch with big player numbers, good reviews, and a solid amount of content. I really enjoyed XDefiant, as it provided me with a fast-paced military arena shooter but didn’t take up 200 GB of space on my console like modern Call of Duty titles. But a report from Insider Gaming in August claimed the FPS wasn’t making enough money and was hemorrhaging players, leading to Ubisoft execs losing confidence in it. XDefiant’s executive producer is now pushing back on these claims in a new blog post.
On September 18, Rubin posted a blog talking about the future of XDefiant’s first year and shared the game’s road map. In the blog, the producer talked about improvements to net code and hit registration that it was working on. Rubin also used the blog post to address the “status” of the game and rumors of its imminent demise.
“I just want to quickly address the status of the game. i.e. is the game dying,” said Rubin. “No, the game is absolutely not dying.”
“We know there are things we need to improve like Netcode/Hitreg and adding more content to progression, but the game is doing well. We just want it to do better. And we do that by addressing the concerns of our community which has always been the plan. Ubisoft is very much behind us and has allocated more resources to the team in order for us to do that,” said Rubin.
August’s Insider Gaming report claimed that the studio had until November to turn things around or Ubisoft would stop supporting XDefiant. A previous report from the outlet also claimed that Ubisoft San Fransico had a less-than-great workplace environment led by a so-called “Boys Club” or a small group of employees who reportedly controlled the game’s development and led to delays. This was not addressed in Tuesday’s blog post.
“Thank you everyone for all of the support that you have given us!!! We’re looking forward to an amazing rest of the year for XDefiant,” ended Rubin in the Ubisoft post. XDefiant’s second season launches on September 25.
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