Even though it’s less than seven months old,Ubisofthas announced that they’re permanently shutting down their latest free-to-play FPS in exactly six months time.
Then, roughly a month after it released, Ubisoft’s CEO Yves Guillemot announced that the gamehad garnered over 11 million unique players.
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Most publishers would kill for player numbers like this. Yet, clearly Ubisoft has decided thatXDefiantis (somehow) not profitable enough to keep around, as the official @PlayXDefiant Twitter account announced that the game will be shutting its doors next year.
“Thank you for your incredible support and dedication toXDEFIANT,”reads the statement, We regret to inform you that we are initiating the sunset process starting today, December 3, 2024.”
“As a result, new downloads, player registrations and purchases will no longer be available. Season 3 will still launch. The servers will remain active, and the game will be fully playable until June 3rd, 2025.”
Take a look atXDefiantin action below.
Worse still, in aseparate post on Ubisoft’s website, Marie-Sophie de Waubert (Ubisoft’s chief studios and portfolio officer) revealed that the decision to shut down the title would also result in 277 people losing their jobs.
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As de Waubert explained,XDefiantgoing offline means that Ubisoft will be closing their “San Francisco and Osaka production studios” and ramping down their ”Sydney production site, with 143 people departing in San Francisco and 134 people likely to depart in Osaka and Sydney.”
So, how did we get here? The game was successful (at least at one point in time) and the executive producer Mark Rubin stated that there were “NO plans to shut down”XDefiantback in October.
Well, whileXDefiantgot off to a great start, player numbers dwindled pretty quickly. Back in August,Insider Gaming’s Tom Henderson reportedthat sources close to Ubisoft stated thatXDefianthad less than “20,000 concurrent players across all its platforms.”
One of Insider Gaming’s sources even stated that we should “expect more Ubisoft San Fran layoff headlines within six months” - which proved to be depressingly accurate.
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Here’s hoping the folks affected find new work ASAP.
Topics:Ubisoft
