I just saw that Vince Zampella passed away yesterday in a car crash. I had to read it multiple times to believe it. He was an amazing mentor and friend. He will be sorely missed. My heart goes out to his family. RIP my friend!

Christmas when you have a cat. 🎄🐈 #Christmas #cat

Just to be clear, because @jasonschreier reached out to tell me the article said that SC was in development in 2017 and I got there in 2019 and that is correct. What my message was trying to convey was that at no time when I was at Ubisoft was the SF team working on SC and that project was not canceled to make XDefiant. My beef with the article is that there was an implied action of canceling SC to make XDefiant and that is untrue. Maybe that wasn't intentional which is fine. Just trying to convey the real truth. That being said I really appreciate all the love for XDefiant! Sorry it didn't work out the way we had hoped. Love you all!

It’s a sad day for fans of XDefiant and for all of the passionate devs that worked so hard on this game. 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. In fact, I would say something remarkable happened with this game in that although we had very little marketing, we still had the fastest acquisition of players in the first few weeks for a Ubisoft title just from you guys all talking about and promoting the game. But unfortunately, with little to no marketing, especially after launch, we weren’t acquiring new players after the initial launch. We had other issues though as well that we tried to be transparent about. 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. 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. This tech debt included the dreaded netcode issues that we could just not solve given the architecture we were dealing with. And so, for many players with solid network connections (in both speed and consistent reliability) the game played well but if your connection had even the smallest amount of inconsistency the engine just couldn’t handle it and you would have a bad experience. Normally, you should be able to weather those bad moments on your network. But this was a major issue with XDefiant. Another issue we had was having the right resources to make content for the game. What we saw at Season 3 wasn’t even enough content in my mind for launch. There were some really cool features coming later in Season 4 or even 5 that would have completed the game in a way that I felt it should have been for launch. I can say everyone’s (devs, HQ leadership, etc.) heart was in the right place but we just didn’t have the gas to go the distance for a free-to-play game. So again, I really want to praise and salute all of the devs that worked on XDefiant! The cards were heavily stacked against you, but you managed to produce a really fun and terrific game! And I like to call it out every time I talk about it, but I think our maps were some of the best maps ever made for an arcade shooter. So, congrats to everyone for what they accomplished. I also think we made a decent impact in the space. We saw a lot of reactions from other games to what we were doing and that to me speaks volumes. I’m really sorry we couldn’t quite deliver and maintain this game for a longer time. In case everyone doesn’t know, the team behind XDefiant was all let go at the end of last year and I know many people have moved on to other studios, which is great, and I hope that for all of those still looking, that they find something quickly. As for me, I’ve decided to leave the industry and spend more time with my family so unfortunately you won’t be hearing about me making another game. I do care passionately about the shooter space and hope 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. Thank you again to everyone who had so much passion for XDefiant.

Season 3's menu music was absolutely amazing!!! linkedin.com/posts/andrewlev…

Hey @Starlink We spent 3 days with no power here in LA and because we had no internet and no cell reception in the hills we had a hard time keeping up with the fire and we are walking distance to a mandatory evacuation zone. It was a horrible feeling, so I immediately bought a Starlink mini cause I don't ever want to be so cutoff ever again. So, with this and a solar battery generator, I never will. Thank you, @elonmusk, for making this a reality!

Hello Everyone, So here it is! Our last content patch for XDefiant. It’s obviously a bittersweet moment but I just want to say how proud I am of everyone on this team that did everything they could to make this game and all of its amazing content. Ubisoft has not only allowed a small team to stay on and continue working to get our Season 3 content out the door, but we’ve also been able to add some extra content to this release from future seasons. So, we have our Season 3 content plus some of the content from Season 4, 5, 6,7 and even Season 8. We are adding 3 new factions this patch with the Assassin’s of course that was planned for Season 3 but also Wolves and Omega Force from Seasons 4 and 5 respectively. We are also adding 6 new Arena Maps and 3 new Linear Maps from future seasons. So along with the 4 new maps from Season 3 that’s a total of 13 new maps. And I have to say the team really went all out on these amazing new maps. If you do anything at all, you need to check out the new Rayman map that was going to be part of an epic event takeover in Season 4. It even has it’s own mode with Lum Hunt. We’ve added a brand-new experience called Tactical that is all about corridor style maps with the first mode in that experience called Defuse; a 1-life classic Bomb mode. We’ve added the ability to play against Bots in a way that would have allowed players to warm up or just chill out with less pressure but still gaining XP. There are a few new weapons that were supposed to come in future seasons as well. Along with new cosmetics that have all been unlocked for everyone. There is new progression mechanics with Faction Mastery and Badges that the community would have to come together to discover how they all can be earned. All of this and more are our last tribute to all of the hard-working people that made this game and to all of the fans who have been with us through this journey. Not all journeys end well but we can all be proud of what we accomplished. I wish everyone who worked on this game directly or indirectly the best for their future endeavors. And the same goes for all of the fans who played our game, who streamed it, or who worked to build the XDefiant community. Thank you all! Mark Link to Patch Notes: x.com/PlayXDefiant/status/18…

Hello XDefiant Fans, I am unfortunately here today to announce that XDefiant will be shutting down. Starting today (December 3, 2024), new downloads and player registrations will no longer be available. We will still release our Season 3 content in the near future (exact date TBD) and the servers will remain active until June 3, 2025. For those who purchased the Ultimate Founder’s Pack, you’ll receive a full refund. Players who made any purchases within the last 30 days will also be fully refunded. Those refunds should happen automatically within 8 weeks of today and you can find more details on our official website, XDefiant.com. A few years ago, Ubisoft and the SF Dev team embarked on a bold adventure to develop a new arcade shooter called XDefiant. It was from the start, an incredible challenge. Not only were we trying to shake up the genre by removing Skill-Based Matchmaking (SBMM) while bringing back a more “old-school” arcade shooter experience, but we were also diving into the high-risk, high-reward realm of free-to-play. And for that I want to applaud not only the Dev team but also Ubisoft leadership for taking that chance! Free-to-play, in particular, is a long journey. Many free-to-play games take a long time to find their footing and become profitable. It’s a long journey that Ubisoft and the teams working on the game were prepared to make until very recently. But unfortunately, the journey became too much to sensibly continue. 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 game! If there’s one thing, I hope we can all take away from this experience, it’s the importance of open, honest communication between developers and players. This “player-first” mentality along with respectful, non-toxic conversations between developers and players has been one of the standout differences that made XDefiant so special. From my very first post about XDefiant, this was the vision I wanted to champion, and I hope it leaves a positive mark on how the game industry treats its players and communities. To our players, THANK YOU! From the bottom of my heart, I want to express my deepest gratitude for the incredible community that has grown around XDefiant. Your passion, creativity, and dedication have inspired us every step of the way. With the utmost of love and respect, Mark

Improving our cosmetics is one of the things we want to improve significantly. We want more of this!

Take your gameplay to the stratosphere in XDefiant’s new Air & Space map when it goes live tomorrow! To celebrate, we’re kicking off the Stellar Strike event – learn all about it here: ubisoft.com/r/XDefiant_Airan…

To be crystal clear there are NO plans to shut down after season 4. I've literally been in meetings as of last week to discuss our Year 2 plans. But, right now we are super focused on improving the technical experience (which includes netcode) and adding more content for Seasons 3 & 4. We have done very little marketing so yes our 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.

Love these videos!!! So much fun to watch. Great job guys....and girls! 😁

The Y1S2.2 Patch Notes have landed and will be going live tomorrow bringing some highly requested adjustments. Check out the full notes below playxdefiant.com/y1s2_2-patc…

Season 2 is officially LIVE! Time to get revved up and ready to roll. 😉

The Highwaymen are taking a little longer than expected to get their gear set up & ready for you. Downtime has been extended an hour! We'll let you know when servers are live!

Here it is - an update on our Year 1 plans! 🎉 Read our latest article to read about our Year 1 roadmap and discussion on netcode/hitreg ➡ xdefiant.com/year-1-update

Coming mid-Season 2, Objectives will be linked to Weapon XP. Every active objective score event counts towards weapon XP. That means when you're playing the objective in any mode, your weapon XP is climbing. PLUS, we’re rebalancing XP leveling to keep the grind just right.

Hey all, just wanted to talk about the sniper flinch change coming. Flinch will be in between where it was before the last change and where it is now. Also, as a bonus we have a Phantom nerf incoming. 120hp -> 115hp (doesn't change much on ARs, but helps SMGs who are impacted the most by more than an additional bullet to kill) -5% move speed 4s -> 5s regen delay (4s is base for all factions) These are all coming in a patch after Season 2 goes live.