Ubisoft’s crossover shooterXDefianthasannounced its impending shutdown, just over six months after its initial launch. A multiplayer-only, first-person shooter featuring characters and locations from across Ubisoft’s expansive body of work,XDefiantwas released on June 11, 2025. It garnered mixed reviews from critics, and even Ubisoft CEO Yves Guillemot admittedit had fallen behind expectationsback in October, but the final nail in the coffin came just today, December 4.
In a post on X (formerly Twitter),executive producer Mark Rubin madeXDefiant’s shutdown official, explaining the reasons for its shutdown and thanking players in a lengthy open letter. He cited the difficulties of the free-to-play game market as the primary reason forXDefiant’s sunsetting. As of today, Rubin said,XDefiantwill no longer be available for download or new player registration, but current players will still be able to access it through August 16, 2025. The planned Season 3 content is still expected to be released at a later date.
In addition, Rubin announced,players who purchased the Ultimate Founder’s Pack, DLC, or any in-game currency will be refundedwithin the next two months. Refunds are expected to be processed automatically through the digitial storefronts where players made these purchases - no additional action is required to claim the money back.
Why XDefiant Is Shutting Down
Devs & Players Explain
There’s one simple reason whyXDefiantis shutting down: money. Keeping a seasonal multiplayer game alive can be incredibly expensive. Ubisoft must have been paying for servers to keep the game up and running, developers to generate and test new content, the hardware to keep it all afloat, and much, much more. Rubin made it clear thatthe cost of keepingXDefiantafloat had greatly surpassed the profit it was expected to make, and thus the decision was made to shut it down.
Ubisoft Cancels An Actually Interesting Game For One Destined To Fail
Ubisoft’s earnings report reveals that it’s canceling a very promising game in order to focus on an unknown series with a lot of competition.
Some sources claim it was solely a problem of low player count. According to anInsider Gamingreport from August,XDefiantwas struggling to pull player counts above 20,000. The developers apparently denied these claims in a since-deleted blog post. Either way,XDefiant’s player counts are impossible to verify, since none of the platforms whereXDefiantwas available announce player counts as transparently as, say, Steam. (That may be another reason for its low player count: PC players could only downloadXDefiantfrom the Ubisoft or Xbox stores.)
XDefiant’s rocky launch may also have had something to do with its low player count.It was notoriously buggy in its early days, suffering from issues with hit registration and online connectivity that made the game needlessly troublesome to play. It also had issues with cheating after launch, with reports of immortal players flying around the maps in “God mode.”
For what it’s worth,theXDefiantdevelopment team has always spoken frankly about the game’s issues, with Mark Rubin detailing everything from bug fixes to balance changes on his social media pages. That approach is refreshing, and something other live-service games could stand to learn from. Says Rubin, “If there’s one thing, I hope we can all take away from this experience, it’s the importance of open, honest communication between developers and players. This ‘player-first’ mentality along with respectful, non-toxic conversations between developers and players has been one of the standout differences that made XDefiant so special.”
Our Take: XDefiant Was Doomed To Fail
An Underwhelming Game In An Oversaturated Market
But even ifXDefianthad been bug-free from launch, it wouldn’t have been enough. Its biggest issue is thatit’s a generic first-person shooter game in a market already saturated with similar titles. Sure,XDefianthad a pedigree behind it. It was developed by gaming industry giant Ubisoft, with characters fromFar Cry,Watch Dogs, and theTom Clancy’sextended universe featured prominently. But still, it was never able to compete withFPS titans likeCall of Duty,Counter-Strike,Overwatch,Valorant- I could go on and on, and that’s exactly the problem.
FPS fans tend to be entrenched in their particular favorite games. That goes double if they’ve actually spent money on them. When a similar game comes along, it has to offer gameplay that’s materially different from its predecessors' in order to draw a devoted player base. All its other issues aside,XDefiantnever achieved that, and that’s the ultimate reason for its failure.
