Ubisoft confirms that XDefiant will be discontinued in June 2025 and the game will no longer be downloadable

It’s a difficult but predictable decision for a Ubisoft in crisis.

Ubisoft has announced its closure XDefiant.

Ubisoft announced XDefiant as a military shooter centered around crossovers between different Ubisoft IPs in 2021. After months of private and public testing, the game was released on May 21, 2024.

The launch was a record breaker for Ubisoft: the first million unique players were acquired within 2 ½ hours and 3 million unique players within 48 hours. By June they had 11 million players.

But XDefiant In the months that followed, it failed to retain its player base, leading to disturbing rumors that Ubisoft was already planning to cancel the game. We first reported on such a rumor last August, specifically Ubisoft XDefiant‘s director Mark Rubin repeatedly denied these rumors.

Today the XDefiant account shared this message:

“Dear players,

Important message: XDEFIANT IS SUNSET!

Thank you for your incredible support and commitment to XDEFIANT. We regret to inform you that we are initiating the expiration process from today, December 3, 2024.

As a result, new downloads, player registrations and purchases will no longer be available.

Season 3 is yet to start. The servers will remain active and the game will be fully playable by June 3, 2025.”

Mark Rubin also shared a personal message. We focus on this excerpt:

“It obviously breaks my heart to have to write this post. Yes, this game has been a personal passion of mine for years and yes, I know that not all challenges lead to victory, but I also want to pay tribute to all the developers affected by this closure. Every single one of them is a real person with a real life separate from our own, and they all put so much passion into making this game.

And I hope they can be proud of what they have achieved. I know that I will always be proud and grateful to have worked with such an amazing team! A team that really punched above their weight class.”

Rubin also praised how he pitched the game to Ubisoft. They aimed to make the game free to play, with an arcade feel, and deliberately avoided skill-based matchmaking.

He ended his statement by saying that he hopes the developers and fans take away the value of continuous communication between both parties to improve the game.

This is one of the crucial decisions Ubisoft has made at a time when the entire company is in crisis. Regardless of the merits of this game or whether Ubisoft could have made it a success at a time when they were even more successful, they seem to be backing down as they place their bets between the commitments they have to keep and the projects , which they have to comply with, have a better chance of success.

Ubisoft is the full owner XDefiant and all franchises under it, in the same manner as it belonged to him Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown. Star Wars Outlaws, Avatar: Borders of PandoraAnd Skull and bones All have other parties that blame Ubisoft for the success of these titles.

Even if these rumors hadn’t been circulating, it would be easy to predict that Ubisoft would cut production XDefiant. At the moment it is not clear whether this will prove to be the right decision, but we will see in time.