We mentioned earlier this week how we'd been playing Ubisoft's XDefiant on its final day before the game shut its servers forever, and unfortunately that's exactly what happened - it's officially no longer playable in any form right now.
Following this, XDefiant executive producer Mark Rubin (who also worked on loads of Call of Duty games in the past) announced his retirement from the games industry in a lengthy social media post, stating that he wished to spend more time with his family. He also advised that the entire team behind XDefiant had been "let go" at Ubisoft.
"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."
Rubin also went into more detail about why XDefiant didn't work, highlighting "crippling tech debt using an engine that wasn’t designed for what we were doing", a severe lack of content at launch, and very little marketing.
Nevertheless, he enthused that his team produced a "really fun and terrific game" with "some of the best maps ever made for an arcade shooter", and that the features planned for Season 4 and Season 5 would have been "really cool.
"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."
"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."
It's a sad end all around, then, and we wish Rubin all the best in the future. For what it's worth, we really enjoyed our time with XDefiant here at Pure Xbox, and hope that everyone affected by its closure lands on their feet.
You can see an old interview with Mark Rubin from his Call of Duty days down below.