Ubisoft shutting down XDefiant in 2025, laying off half of its team
Ubisoft will shut down its free-to-play shooter XDefiant, Ubisoft announced Tuesday. Servers will remain on until June 3, 2025, but the game will no longer be offered for download, and player registration will be closed. Despite the sunsetting, XDefiant players will get access to its third-season content sometime in the “near future.” Nearly 300 people — 143 in the San Francisco office and 134 across Ubisoft’s Osaka and Sydney locations — will be laid off. The other half of the XDefiant production team will move onto other roles at Ubisoft, according to chief studios and portfolio officer Marie-Sophie de Waubert.
“Despite an encouraging start, the team’s passionate work, and a committed fan base, we’ve not been able to attract and retain enough players in the long run to compete at the level we aim for in the very demanding free-to-play FPS market,” de Waubert wrote in an internal notice published on the Ubisoft website. “As a result, the game is too far away from reaching the results required to enable further significant investment, and we are announcing that we will be sunsetting it.”
With XDefiant shutting down and the hundreds of layoffs, Ubisoft said it’s closing its San Francisco and Osaka production studios entirely. Insider Gaming reported that a “skeleton crew” will be kept on to keep XDefiant running until its total closure.
XDefiant players who purchased the $69.99 Ultimate Founder’s Pack will get a full, automatic refund, according to XDefiant executive producer Mark Rubin in a letter to the community. All purchases made within the prior 30 days will be refunded, too. However, according to a Ubisoft FAQ, “the Founder’s Pack and Founder’s Pack Elite are not eligible for refunds.” Rubin said players should expect any refunds within eight weeks.
XDefiant was released on May 21 of this year, following an announcement of the project in 2021. At launch, the game was seemingly a success: It reportedly reached 1 million players within hours of its official launch, according to Insider Gaming. No official player or revenue numbers have been released, but Ubisoft CEO Yves Guillemot said during an investor call in September that the game did not meet expectations. In October, Rubin posted on X that numbers were down due to “very little marketing,” a strategy designed to “get the game in a better place” before ramping up marketing to attract new and lapsed players. He wrote that he was “crystal clear” in that there were no plans to close XDefiant after its fourth season, following an Insider Gaming report.
In its most recent earnings report in late October, Ubisoft reported that its sales were down nearly 20%, but that engagement metrics for its games were up. Ubisoft also reported that it decreased its staff by more than 2,000 people in the prior 24 months -- a number that is likely a mixture of both layoffs and voluntary departures. Ubisoft employs 18,666 people as of September, with the company reportedly “on track” to continue reducing costs. (Staff retention, it said, was good — “close to historical levels.) Star Wars Outlaws underperformed, Ubisoft said, but stayed quiet on the status of XDefiant — so quiet on the game that an analyst questioned Guillemont on the game’s dwindling success. “XDefiant is behind our expectations but the games-as-a-service strategy remains core,” Guillemont said at the time. That line still appears to be true: de Waubert said in the notice to staff on Tuesday that games-as-a-service remains “a pillar” of Ubisoft’s strategy, citing success with Rainbow Six, The Crew, and For Honor.
