Ubisoft is rumored to end support on its recent live-service game XDefiant following season four if it does not increase its player base.
A screenshot from XDefiant (2024), Ubisoft
X user just4leaks2 reports, “XDefiant is alredy Dead. Ubisoft research team is actively asking their tester to have another In-House test session and give/repeat their feedback.
He added, “Multiple sources told that its possible that the game will end its Support after season 4 if they cant get enough players.”
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The rumor is not out of left field. Ubisoft CEO Yves Guillemot revealed on the company’s most recent Trading Update call that sales for XDefiant were below expectations leading to the company significantly reducing its net bookings for its second quarter.
During the call, Nicholas Langlet of BNP Paribas questioned, “So the Q2 guidance … is it only Star Wars Outlaws or is there something else underperforming in the portfolio?”
Guillemot responded, “It mostly reflects the softer than expected sales for Star Wars Outlaws. We also had behind expectations for XDefiant, which we will give you a bit more detail at the end of October.”
A screenshot from XDefiant (2024), Ubisoft
This information was completely different than to how Ubisoft and Guillemot touted the game the company’s first quarter sales report where they touted the game’s success which launched its preseason on May 21st.
He said at the time, “The quarter notably saw the launch of XDefiant, that is off to an encouraging start as we continue to grow the audience at a steady pace and plan a quarterly roadmap of content that will allow us to firmly establish the game over time.”
A screenshot from XDefiant (2024), Ubisoft
The report also shared, “The game, that topped viewership charts, acquired more than 10 million players within its first two weeks, with players praising the thrilling, fast-paced gameplay and the map variety.”
It also declared, “The game outperformed expectations thanks to acquisition and strong average revenue per session day.”
A report from Tom at Insider Gaming claimed at the time of launch the game had over one million unique players in its first 2.5 hours and over 8 million in its first week.
A screenshot from XDefiant (2024), Ubisoft
However, Henderson also reported at the end of August that things were not looking good for XDefiant and that the game was seeing “continuously declining player numbers and lack of player spending.”
He reported that one source informed him that “the game has been struggling to obtain 20,000 concurrent players across all its platforms.”
Another source shared, “They [Ubisoft] would probably be happy with that number.” This suggests that the concurrent player number counts are much lower than 20,000.
In fact, Henderson also shared that if the game does not turn things around by Season 3 it “risks losing its much-needed post-launch support.”
A screenshot from XDefiant (2024), Ubisoft
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Following Henderson’s report, Ubisoft addressed it in a blog post for the game in the middle of September. The game’s Executive Game Director Mark Rubin stated, “I just want to quickly address the status of the game. i.e. is the game dying? No, the game is absolutely not dying.”
He elaborated, “We know there are things we need to improve like Netcode/Hitreg and adding more content to progression, but the game is doing well. We just want it to do better.”
“And we do that by addressing the concerns of our community which has always been the plan. Ubisoft is very much behind us and has allocated more resources to the team in order for us to do that,” he stated.
To that point he revealed the game’s Year 1 roadmap which ends with Season 4.
XDefiant’s Year 1 Roadmap
While Rubin claimed the game was doing well, Sean Carey at True Achievements noted that the game had fallen out of its Most Popular Xbox Games chart, which is based off a 2.4 million random sample of Xbox accounts.
Carey noted that the game debuted in fifth on the charts back in May and even moved up to 4th before it slowly fell down the charts over the next 12 weeks. He noted, “the XDefiant Xbox player count has dropped an incredible 94%, and the shooter now sits in 81st place in our latest chart.” That was back in the middle of September.
A screenshot from XDefiant (2024), Ubisoft
What do you make of this rumor that Ubisoft might pull support for XDefiant at the conclusion of Season 4 if it does not increase its player base?
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