Ubisoft San Francisco’s free-to-play team-based shooter XDefiant attracted 8 million players at its launch in May and even contributed to Ubisoft’s success in the second quarter of 2024, but since then things have gone markedly worse for the project.
Image source: Ubisoft
According to insider Tom Henderson, citing his sources, XDefiant has been actively losing players in recent weeks: the total peak online on all platforms does not reach (and seriously) even 20 thousand people.
According to Henderson, Ubisoft management set a task for the developers to increase activity indicators by the end of the third season (the second starts on September 24), otherwise XDefiant risks losing the remaining post-release support.
XDefiant developers found themselves unwitting participants in a race against time
With Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 releasing between seasons two and three of XDefiant (October 25), the game’s future looks bleak. The informants interviewed by Henderson are pessimistic.
The studio fears new layoffs (in addition to those that already happened in August), and one of Henderson’s informants gives a gloomy forecast: “Expect fresh news about layoffs at Ubisoft San Fran[cisco] in the next six months.”
Employees, meanwhile, are dissatisfied with studio management, which refuses to take blame for the project’s failures. Rumors about a toxic atmosphere in the team provoked an internal investigation, but in the end the problem was simply hushed up.
XDefiant launched on PC (Ubisoft Connect), PS5, Xbox Series X and S. In a review for 3DNews, Alexey Likhachev called the game an enjoyable shooter with a very decent foundation that can be developed in interesting directions.