XDefiant is officially offline, after its servers shut down earlier this week. Shortly after the game was shut down, the failed multiplayer shooter’s executive producer, Mark Rubin, announced that he would be leaving Ubisoft and the game industry.
Rubin, who worked on the original Call of Duty: Modern Warfare games and their remasters before leaving Infinity Ward for Ubisoft to make XDefiant, announced his departure on his personal X account, thanking those who played XDefiant and the former members of the now-shuttered Ubisoft San Francisco who helped build the game along with Rubin.
“It’s a sad day for fans of XDefiant and for all of the passionate devs that worked so hard on this game,” Rubin began. “I want to thank everyone who played it and everyone who promoted it whether you were a big content creator or just a fan. Every voice mattered.”
At one point, XDefiant looked like it would be the next big hit for Ubisoft. The company was investing in it over other projects; it hit huge player milestones in a matter of weeks when it released, and even when there were reports of internal trouble for the game, Rubin was confident in its longevity, with plans being laid for future content beyond the game’s initial year. Which made it all the more unfortunate when Rubin’s public statements saying the game wouldn’t be shut down so soon were proven to be flat-out wrong.
XDefiant wasn’t a perfect game, but regarding why it didn’t last, Rubin seems to point to the game having “very little marketing,” as a key reason why XDefiant was struggling to grow its player base post-launch.
But it wasn’t the only issue that XDefiant faced. “For one we had crippling tech debt using an engine that wasn’t designed for what we were doing, and we didn’t have the engineering resources to ever correct that,” Rubin wrote. “I do personally think that in-house engines are not the valuable investment that they used to be and they are often doomed to fall behind big engines like Unreal.”
Rubin also highlighted network issues the game had that couldn’t be properly fixed due to a lack of resources, and alluded to features that never made it into the game that could’ve “completed the game in a way that I felt it should have been for launch.” He essentially makes it seem like Ubisoft had XDefiant set up to fail, and then gave up on it before giving it a chance to rise above its issues. Though he adds that those who worked on the game, from its developers to the leadership at Ubisoft headquarters, had their hearts “in the right place.“
He closes out his long statement by announcing his departure from Ubisoft and from the game industry, choosing to spend more time at home and with his family, and that while he won’t be making another game, he hopes “that someone else can pick up the flag that I was trying to carry and make games again that care about the players, treat them with respect and listen to what they have to say.”
