So long and farewell,XDefiant. We barely knew ye.
After a few weeks of initial excitement, Ubisoft’s FPS found itself unable to retain players or keep them spending enough money to make the free-to-play live-service shooter sustainable. And so tonight, a little over a year since launching, it shuts down forever.
The announcement that the game was shutting down came six months ago, so it’s been known for quite some time that the title would be sunset, but everything goes dark on June 3 for the final time.
“Free-to-play, in particular, is a long journey,” executive producer Mark Rubinsaidon Jul 01, 2025. “Many free-to-play games take a long time to find their footing and become profitable. It’s a long journey that Ubisoft and the teams working on the game were prepared to make until very recently. But unfortunately, the journey became too much to sensibly continue.”
Featuring Ubisoft IP characters and likenesses such asWatch_Dogs, The Division, Rainbow Six,and FarCry,XDefiantgot off to a hot start with eight million players in its first week after launching on August 08, 2025. It also boasted high viewership on Twitch while targeting aCall of Dutyaudience that was frustrated by skill-based matchmaking, whichXDefiantdid not use in its casual playlists.
But the honeymoon period did not last very long, as the game failed to capture player attention, and most importantly, their money.
The game was in development hell for several years, experiencing multiple delays and tumult behind the scenes, according toreports. But once it finally came out, the excitement felt at least a little bit real for a while until player count and interest steadily dwindled throughout 2024, leading to the game’s cancellation.
Despite adding seasonal content like new factions, weapons, and maps, along with ranked play, XDefiant lost out to the rest of the industry and was most likely dealt a death blow byBlack Ops 6launching in October.
By the end of August,Insider Gamingreported thatXDefiantwas on “borrowed time,” and just a few months later, it was made official that the game was being put out to pasture.
I enjoyedXDefiantat first…in small bursts. It brought back some of the memories of fast-paced, Twitchy console shooters likeCoD’sof the past. But it unfortunately did little to keep me interested for more than a few weeks. And apparently, I’m not alone in this regard.
XDefiantunfortunately marks the latest in a long line of games that attempt to go big in the live-service shooter genre, only to find out that there are only so many gamers and only so much time for people to play. And it probably won’t be the last.
