XDefiant executive producer refutes rumours of shutdown amid Ubisoft troubles

gamesindustry.biz:

The executive producer of Ubisoft's live service shooter has dismissed reports that the game will shut down.

The rumours began with claims from a leaker on X, claiming that XDefiant is "already dead" and that support end if its player count does not improve significantly after its fourth season.

However, Ubisoft's Mark Rubin has disputed this in an X post of his own, stressing that "there are NO plans to shut down after season 4."

Rubin claims he spent last week in meetings about potential plans for the game's second year, adding that the team's focus is currently on improve the experience and adding more content for both the third and fourth seasons.

"We have done very little marketing so yes our player numbers are down but that is just to give the team the time to get the game in a better place before we do bigger spends on marketing to bring new players to the game and to bring back players that have left," he added.

Both the rumour and response come at a difficult time for Ubisoft, with the company under scrutiny around the performance of various products after Star Wars Outlaws' softer-than-expected sales caused the publisher's share price to fall to a ten-year low.

Ubisoft has since revised its targets for the current financial year, begun an investigation into how it can improve its operations, and delayed upcoming blockbuster Assasin's Creed Shadows to February 2025.

There have even been reports that the publisher could go private, with talk of a Tencent and Guillemot Brothers buyout.

Despite the disappointments around its recent AAA releases, Ubisoft has positioned XDefiant has a success so far. Launching on May 21, the free-to-play game attracted 11 million players within a month.

The game was also highlighted as a key success in its most recent financial results.

At the time, CEO Yves Guillemot said: "[XDefiant] is off to an encouraging start as we continue to grow the audience at a steady pace and plan a quarterly roadmap of content that will allow us to firmly