What you need to know
- Ubisoft launched free-to-play first-person shooter XDefiant on May 21, 2024, after years of open and closed testing.
- While the game saw initial success in garnering millions of players, this playerbase quickly collapsed in the months after launch.
- Ubisoft is shutting XDefiant down in 2025, and is barring new players from downloading the game starting Dec. 3, 2024.
- Per Game File’s Stephen Totilo, Ubisoft is shuttering its San Francisco and Osaka studios, laying off around 177 employees, with half of the XDefiant team are reportedly being moved to other projects.
It’s another dark day for the gaming industry, an event that repeatedly occurs with clockwork precision in recent months.
Ubisoft is shutting down its free-to-play shooter XDefiant, with the game no longer being accessible for new players to download starting Tuesday. Per a message from the game’s official X (Twitter) account, XDefiant will remain playable for existing players through June 3, 2025, with the promised Season 3 content still arriving at an unknown point before then.
Per Stephen Totilo of Game File, the bad news doesn’t stop there, with Ubisoft closing down the Ubisoft San Francisco and Ubisoft Osaka studios while laying off half of the team that worked on XDefiant, or about 177 employees.
First announced all the way back in 2021, XDefiant went through years of testing before finally launching on May 21, 2024 across Xbox Series X|S, Windows PC, and PlayStation 5. The game was designed as a competitor to Xbox and Activision’s Call of Duty franchise.
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