Ubisoft shooter XDefiant is shutting down and sending refunds to gamers

Regardless of solely formally launching the sport in spring of this 12 months, Ubisoft has already introduced that it’s ending growth and sunsetting its free-to-play team-based shooter XDefiant. Like Hyper Scape earlier than it, XDefiant had excessive expectations, with Ubisoft touting greater than 1 million gamers in its closed beta final 12 months. Now, it’s going to disappear shortly, because it’s not accepting new gamers as of at this time and is scheduled to close off the servers solely subsequent June.

Regardless of a delayed launch, Ubisoft mentioned that XDefiant had reached greater than 10 million gamers in its first two weeks and “outperformed expectations due to acquisition and robust common income per session day.” Nonetheless, it couldn’t preserve that momentum, and by this fall, rumors of hassle surfaced, with Insider Gaming reporting that concurrent participant numbers throughout all platforms had fallen under 20,000.

Ubisoft states, “The sport will stay accessible to all gamers who joined XDefiant earlier than December third, 2024. All functionalities, together with development, occasions, rewards, and achievements, will proceed to be accessible till June third, 2025.” The deliberate Season 3 content material will nonetheless launch, and the corporate is refunding anybody who purchased the Final Founders Pack, in addition to gamers who purchased VC and DLC within the final month.

Like with Harmony developer Firewalk Studios, this shutdown comes with job losses. In keeping with Ubisoft, “tough penalties” are resulting in “the closing of our San Francisco and Osaka manufacturing studios and to the ramp down of our Sydney manufacturing website, with 143 individuals departing in San Francisco and 134 individuals more likely to depart in Osaka and Sydney.”