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[HeisenbergFX4]

In September 2023, Ubisoft had a free-to-play gem on their hands — XDefiant. The gameplay was good, the community was bustling, transparency from the developers was highly praised and most of all, the game had a really passionate and dedicated community. Six months on and things are somewhat different for XDefiant, with fans increasingly expressing their frustrations with the lack of updates.

According to Ubisoft’s Q3 2024 earnings report, XDefiant is scheduled to be released by the end of Q4 2024 (March 31st, 2024), but with just one week until the date, there’s been zero indication of a release. The once-loathed transparency is now seemingly dead and XDefiant hasn’t had an update for some time. Speaking with developers at Ubisoft, who wished to remain anonymous because they are not authorized to speak about company plans, it’s understood that XDefiant was aiming to release during the last week of February when this internal release date was made public via Ubisoft’s earnings call — a deadline that was obviously missed.

Insider Gaming understands that XDefiant has missed dozens of internal targets in the past couple of years, including release dates, putting the game firmly in the realm of other Ubisoft titles that is constantly in limbo. Developers working on the project are becoming increasingly frustrated with the lack of progress and in short, the game’s shortcomings stem from the executive’s pursuit of trying to copy Call of Duty, rather than building their own game. Creatively, it’s frustrating for the team, but from a technical perspective, it also presents new challenges and has become the main reason for delays. “The neverending hunt to chase COD and add pointless stuff always breaks the current build”, said one source, which often then requires days of fixing the game.


As is generally always the case with games in limbo, the root of the problem comes from the higher-ups with the developers left with the burden. In truth, if you’re a fan of XDefiant, I would be a little more wary in the future of the whole ‘open transparency’ thing — as it usually has bigger implications and doesn’t reflect what’s truly going on.

So the big question — When will XDefiant release? It’s a great question and is likely why Ubisoft has been silent on the matter for months because in short, I don’t think even they know.

The good news is that the game isn’t in danger of being canceled and development is still ongoing at its usual rate. In fact, just today, XDefiant had a substantial playtest to test the netcode, online store, social media tabs, etc. and the current plan is to have another large open public test session as soon as possible. So while I don’t have any internal release dates right now (and to be honest it’d be pointless saying anyway), we’re probably still a good few months from release as feedback from the next public test session is taken on board.

 

[LegendOfKage]

The recent history that led up to this:

 

[Danny Dudekisser]

Tech issues or no, at least we can be confident that the final product will be boring.

 

[LegendOfKage]

That last tweet I posted really says something about this industry. Imaging working through the holidays for a game that still isn't out at the end of MARCH.

Tech issues or no, at least we can be confident that the final product will be boring.

The game has potential, and it has / had a lot of support from the COD community and content creators. Did you play the beta? I don't see it being much more or less exciting than COD multiplayer is every year, but some of the game design decisions should make COD veterans happy. Just no SBMM alone means a lot of the more skilled content creators will support it. That will mean a lot of free press, which should help it build an audience.

 

[lockdown2222]

It’s going to die out like most Ubisoft games. I can’t believe they continue to operate like this lol. Executives there just seem just as bad as 343 leadership were.

 

[LegendOfKage]

More from the same twitter thread:

I can't wait to ship just so we don't have to talk about ship dates anymore and we can talk about more important stuff like gameplay balancing or new content/modes/maps, etc.

Just to be clear we are not just sitting around with the game fixing every last little bug. Nobody launches perfect bug-free games. We do our best but it's just not realistic to think that. We had major technical issues that we found right before we launched that had to be fixed.

And that's what the team has been working on. And they are not just minor bug fixes but major infrastructure and full system overhauls. The game remains the same that you played already which we have strived to make as fun as possible which we feel confident about.

So aside from questions about launch which I can't talk about, I'm happy to chat about most anything else related to the game.

For instance, I can confirm that no push has been made to put SBMM into the game. Our Unranked playlists will still have no SBMM and you will get the variety of gameplay that you see when there isn't SBMM.

Anyway, I hope everyone is having a great weekend and thank you all for following XDefiant with so much passion! We love you all!

 

[Ribi]

That last tweet I posted really says something about this industry. Imaging working through the holidays for a game that still isn't out at the end of MARCH.



The game has potential, and it has / had a lot of support from the COD community and content creators. Did you play the beta? I don't see it being much more or less exciting than COD multiplayer is every year, but some of the game design decisions should make COD veterans happy. Just no SBMM alone means a lot of the more skilled content creators will support it. That will mean a lot of free press, which should help it build an audience.

Battalion 1944


It'll meet the exact same fate


But this game will be DOA

 

[SJRB]

Tech issues or no, at least we can be confident that the final product will be boring.

The sentiment after those betas was pretty positive. It doesn't seem like the total dumpster fire it appeared to be when it was revealed. They also seem to have ditched the cringe "XD spray-paint neon color" zoomer vibe.

 

[lh032]

never heard this game before until now

 

[Spyxos]

Interesting that it's still not out yet. I played some beta over a year ago and it seemed almost finished even then.

 

[mayham2199]

I enjoyed the beta looking forward to trying it more she was.

 

[wipeout364]

I don’t understand how they don’t want SBMM when it’s been shown to drive player engagement/ retention and is implemented in almost every successful game.

Makes them seem like they are trying to be the cool guy when what will happen is new players/lower skilled players ( the vast majority ) will get destroyed and leave the game.

 

[diffusionx]

I played the game during the open beta and it honestly seemed fine and ready to go. I find it hard to believe that a professional game studio couldn't fix up whatever problems they saw in six months, but then again, this same studio needed 10 years to make a gaashit game that was worse than a mode in a singleplayer game from 2013.

 

[Apocryphon]

I assumed it had been cancelled

 

[clarky]

They missed their chance to release late last year, with MWIII reviewing poorly. Now that game is firing on all cylinders they lost any chance making inroads with the community.