Image: Ubisoft
XDefiant is sunsetting, as Ubisoft lays off 277 employees and shuts down three studios.
Ubisoft’s first-person shooter XDefiant is officially shutting down. Months after the multiplayer game launched on May 21, 2024, the company announced that it was sunsetting the game “despite an encouraging start,” and closing down three production studios in San Francisco, Osaka, and Sydney. These studio closures will also result in the loss of 277 jobs.
Ubisoft to sunset XDefiant in 2025, lays off 277 employees
Ubisoft’s crossover live-service game XDefiant (previously known as Tom Clancy’s XDefiant) is a PvP shooter that brings together playable characters from multiple Ubisoft franchises like Far Cry, The Division, and Rainbow Six Siege, who duke it out in familiar locations inspired by the aforementioned games. The game launched earlier this year in May, and is currently in the midst of its second season of content.
XDefiant never ended up becoming the smash hit Ubisoft likely hoped it would be, however. In a post on the company’s website penned by chief studios and portfolio officer Marie-Sophie de Waubert, it stated that the game was not “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,” even despite “an encouraging start.”
While Ubisoft typically tries to turn things around on its floundering releases post-launch, such as Star Wars Outlaws most recently, it stated that XDefiant “is too far away from reaching the results required to enable further significant investment, and we are announcing that we will be sunsetting it.”
What this means for current XDefiant players is that new downloads, player registrations and purchases will no longer be available. However, Season 3 of the game will still launch as planned – though at an unannounced date – and servers will stay up until June 3, 2025. Don’t expect to be able to pick up new cosmetics in Season 3, however.
On top of all this, Ubisoft is also transitioning “almost half of the XDefiant team worldwide” to other roles, and eliminating the rest of the game’s staff. The company’s San Francisco and Osaka production studios are shutting down, while its Sydney production site will “ramp down.” 143 San Francisco staff members will be laid off, while 134 are “likely to depart” the Osaka and Sydney studios, adding up to roughly 277 employees in total.
These last few weeks have been troubling for Ubisoft. The company is fighting a lawsuit from its Barcelona union, while also being sued for fraud after shutting down The Crew. The company also pushed Assassin’s Creed Shadows’ release into 2025, after which rumours of a buyout began swirling.
