XDefiant Reportely in Danger of Losing Support at Ubisoft

Publisher Ubisoft is reportedly unhappy with the state of its multiplayer shooter XDefiant and could look to shut the project down if it doesn’t garner larger player numbers. After having gone through multiple beta phases throughout 2023, Ubisoft finally released XDefiant at the end of May 2024. Out of the gate, XDefiant did pretty well as the latest free-to-play shooter on the market, but has since seen its player counts plummet quickly. As a result, Ubisoft is now beginning to take inventory and is considering what will next be done with the game. 

According to Insider Gaming, Ubisoft is giving XDefiant until the conclusion of Season 3 to begin bringing in more players (and money) before it opts to make big changes to how it is supported. Season 3 of XDefiant hasn’t fully been outlined just yet, but it’s expected to begin in November and will stretch into the early portion of 2025. Currently, Ubisoft has already announced that Season 4 of XDefiant is being planned, but it now sounds as though these plans could change. 

Insider Gaming goes on to report that “optimism” for XDefiant internally at Ubisoft has changed quickly. Those working on the game at Ubisoft San Francisco are said to be fearing layoffs in addition to dealing with frustration that is aimed at the studio’s management. Ubisoft’s San Francisco studio already suffered layoffs a little more than a month ago, with some of the redundancies directly impacting the XDefiant team. 

By most accounts, it has been a pretty difficult year for Ubisoft so far. While there have been games like Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown that reviewed relatively well, Ubisoft has yet to find a massive hit on its hands. Titles like Skull and Bones, Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora, and now XDefiant have all been thought to have underperformed within the past 12 months. More recently, Star Wars Outlaws was met with a rather middling critical response, but whether or not this has impacted its sales isn’t yet known. 

In November, Ubisoft will release Assassin’s Creed Shadows, which will far and away be its biggest game of 2024. If Shadows happens to also underperform for one reason or another, though, it could spell even larger concerns for Ubisoft and its future portfolio.