Ubisoft is shutting down XDefiant, lays off hundreds of developers

thesixthaxis.com:

Ubisoft has announced that they are shutting down their free-to-play shooter XDefiant, starting the process of sunsetting the game last night with a server shutdown coming in June 2025. This announcement comes just half a year after XDefiant’s launch, though Season 3 will still happen for those who stick around.

Update: As a consequence of the shutdown, Ubisoft is laying off 277 people from their San Francisco, Osaka and Sydney teams. Around half of the global team is able to be moved on to other projects, but these three studio locations are being closed in San Francisco and Osaka, and Sydney is scaling back.

Here’s the timeline for the shutdown

Players who purchased the Ultimate Founder’s Pack will receive a full refund, and any purchases made within the last 30 days will also be fully refunded. This will happen within the next 8 weeks by 28th January 2025 – see the FAQ for more details.

Executive Producer Mark Rubin gave the following message:

I am, of course, heartbroken to have to be writing this post. Yes, this game has been a personal passion for me for years and yes, I know that not all challenges lead to victory, but I also want to recognize all of the developers who are being affected by this closure. Each and every one of them is a real person with a real life separate from our own and they have all put so much of their own passion into making this game. And I hope that they can be proud of what they did achieve. I know that I will always be proud and grateful to have worked with such a great team! A team that really punched above its weight class.

And what they achieved is truly remarkable. The early response from players when XDefiant launched was amazing—we broke internal records for the fastest game to surpass 5 million users and in the end we had over 15 million players play our game! That is something to be extremely proud of, especially considering how tough this genre is. So, thank you to all of the developers who put their passion into making this