XDefiant set to shut servers in 2025

It is a horrible thing to say, but was anyone not expecting this? As announced by Executive Producer at Ubisoft San Francisco for XDefiant, Mark Rubin, and also shared by Ubisoft itself after informing employees, the free-to-play Ubisoft hero shooter (in all but name) will be shutting down. Starting yesterday (December 3rd), new player registration and downloads are no longer available across the board. Servers will continue to be open and the upcoming third season will continue to go ahead, however, no new players can join the game and eventually the servers will go offline in June of 2025.

In the blog post posted on Ubisoft’s website, Chief Studios and Portfolio Officer, Marie-Sophie de Waubert said, “Today, I wanted to share with you that we’ve made the difficult decision to discontinue development on XDefiant. Despite an encouraging start, the team’s passionate work, and a committed fan base, we’ve not been able to attract and retain enough players[,] in the long run[,] to compete at the level we aim for in the very demanding free-to-play FPS market. As a result, the game is too far away from reaching the results required to enable further significant investment, and we are announcing that we will be sunsetting it.“

Not to make it worse, but I think you could see this was the result from space when XDefiant was announced back in 2021 and subsequently shown off at events. The reality is that XDefiant is another first-person shooter that was chasing a live-service trend that was too late to the party to sit with the cool kids; see Concord or more importantly Ubisoft’s own Hyper Scape.

However, as a result of this discontinuation of development, de Waubert goes on to note, “Unfortunately, the discontinuation of XDefiant brings difficult consequences for the teams working on this game. Even if almost half of the XDefiant team worldwide will be transitioning to other roles within Ubisoft, this decision also leads to the closing of our San Francisco and Osaka production studios and to the ramp down of our Sydney production site, with 143 people departing in San Francisco and 134 people likely to depart in Osaka and Sydney. To those team members leaving Ubisoft, I want to express my deepest gratitude for your work and contributions.“

According to Insider Gaming, there will be a “skeleton crew” set to remain on the project to see out the end of its lifetime in June. This includes today’s launch of season 3 of XDefiant. However, it seems this has been on the books for a while, with rumors previously circulating and later shot down by Executive Producer Mark Rubin in October that XDefiant would be shutting down following season 4. This isn’t what anyone wanted, but as I said, it was hardly unexpected.

It isn’t mentioned within Ubisoft’s press release by de Waubert on the closer of XDefiant, though it is noted by Rubin on Twitter (climb in a bin Elon), “For those who purchased the Ultimate Founder’s Pack, you’ll receive a full refund. Players who made any purchases within the last 30 days will also be fully refunded. Those refunds should happen automatically within 8 weeks of today and you can find more details on our official website, XDefiant.com.”

XDefiant will officially have its servers closed on June 3rd, 2025. I think what is most important to point out here is that de Waubert went on to say, “Developing Games-as-a-Service experiences remains a pillar of our strategy,” something that is proving to be quite detrimental to the whole industry, it seems.