XDefiant Servers Are Shutting Down in June 2025

Despite previously addressing the rumors of potential shutdowns, and saying that the game would continue on past Season 4, Ubisoft today officially announced that XDefiant will be shutting down June next year, with Season 3 being the last season.

XDefiant Servers Will Be Closing After Its 1st Anniversary

After seeing countless delays, XDefiant finally saw its release back in May, opening up to some impressive launch day numbers. Though everything seemed to be going well for the newest free-to-play title, it wouldn’t be very long after launch that the game began seeing trouble. A lot of that trouble stemmed from technical issues that have continued to plague the game since its release, which in turn, began to see players flocking away to other titles. Recently, rumors began swirling that the title would shut down, though that would soon be addressed by Mark Rubin, executive producer on the title, noting that they were having meetings for Year 2 already.

“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.”

This comment was made almost two months back, which brings us to today, where Ubisoft officially announced that the title is shutting down next year.

“Today, I wanted to share with you that we’ve made the difficult decision to discontinue development on XDefiant,

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. 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.

Concretely, that means that as of today, new downloads, player registrations and purchases will no longer be available. Season 3 will still launch, and the servers will remain active until June 3, 2025, out of appreciation for both our dev teams who worked on it and for XDefiant’s active players.

Unfortunately, the discontinuation of XDefiant brings difficult consequences for the teams working on this game. Even if almost half of the XDefiant team worldwide will be transitioning to other roles within Ubisoft, this decision also leads to the closing of our San Francisco and Osaka production studios and to the ramp down of our Sydney production site, with 143 people departing in San Francisco and 134 people likely to depart in Osaka and Sydney. To those team members leaving Ubisoft, I want to express my deepest gratitude for your work and contributions. Please know that we are committed to supporting you during this transition.

Developing Games-as-a-Service experiences remains a pillar of our strategy, and we’ve achieved significant successes, like Rainbow Six, The Crew, and For Honor, among others. It’s a highly competitive market, and we will apply the lessons learned with XDefiant to our future live titles.

Globally, we are determined to take the necessary steps to put the company back on a path to growth, innovation and creativity and make sure we can set you up for success. This means continuing to radically evolve our mindset for Production and Business practices, which we will share more about soon, and doing targeted restructuring when necessary. I know that the situation brings questions and expectations, and we will share regular and transparent updates.

My sincere thanks for your continued dedication as we navigate these trying times together.

Marie-Sophie de Waubert, Chief Studios and Portfolio Officer”

This is absolutely devastating news. Not only is the game shutting down next year, but Ubisoft is also closing down the studios and laying off hundreds of employees in the process. Our prayers go out to everyone affected by these layoffs.

As for XDefiant, we can’t say we are surprised by the news given the previous rumors, and how the fan base seemed to have been dwindling in numbers over the last months. Anyone in the community could probably tell you that things weren’t looking too bright, and it’s just unfortunate this happened so soon in its lifespan.

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