XDefiant Signs Off With Assassin's Creed-Flavored Bang, Delivers 13 New Maps and Plenty of New Content in Final Patch

[Cpt.Jank]

Ubisoft announced earlier this month that it would be sunsetting its free-to-play first-person shooter, XDefiant, on June 3, 2025, after dwindling player counts made it unfeasible to continue supporting the live-service game. Despite the game being shut down by Ubisoft, the game's development team at Ubisoft San Francisco apparently still wanted to follow through with some of the content it had in the game's pipeline. In an announcement on X, the game's executive producer clarifies that much of the content that is being delivered in what he calls the last patch contains all the content that was planned for Season 3 along with some content from future seasons of the game, including Season 4, 5, 6, 7, and 8.

Some major highlights in the new patch, are 13 new maps, three new factions, including the Assassins—from Assassin's Creed—six new weapons, and five new game modes. Along with the slew of new content, XDefiant received a handful of gameplay and QoL fixes for both competitive and casual play. The new maps consist of eight new arena maps, four new linear maps, and one new tactical map. XDefiant also got a new progression system that allows players to unlock cosmetics, badges, and other rewards for character progression. The developer also introduced daily rewards and "Credits," the game's new in-game currency that allows players to buy skins and other items from previous seasons.




Overall, the response to these new updates has been quite positive, with many fans asking one of two questions: "Why didn't Ubisoft release this earlier?" And "Why did Ubisoft cancel the game without giving these updates a chance first?" Although dropping all of this content all at once is a much more transformative move than the Season 3 update was meant to be, even the Season 3 content looks like it could have made a difference to the game as a whole. A group of fans has even started a Change.org petition to bring XDefiant back from the dead. While it's a valiant effort to save a game they love, it seems unlikely that Ubisoft would go back on its decision, regardless of signatures.

Read Mark Rubin's statement about the final XDefiant content update:

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

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[LabRat 891]

 

[Solaris17]

Wtf is xdefiant?

 

[dj-electric]

Wtf is xdefiant?

And this is exactly why this project failed, pretty much. Ubisoft did a very poor job telling everyone about their new game

 

[the54thvoid]

And this is exactly why this project failed, pretty much. Ubisoft did a very poor job telling everyone about their new game

A lot of publishers forget that marketing is more important for a multi-million dollar product than anything else these days. They spend 'x' amount making a game, then release it with almost no fanfare. It's amazing they haven't learned.

People will talk about good game design, mechanics etc, but that's no use if nobody hears about it. Even then, there are so many IPs out there, the game has to have something special (an existing well known IP - Marvels Rivals, Stalker 2, etc).

 

[Vayra86]

Nah. A good game gets picked up regardless and then becomes a sleeper hit. Thousands of indies prove you wrong. They don't have lots of marketing either, but a few well targeted blurbs are enough.

XDefiant is just 13 in a dozen junk that should be forgotten fast. Much like most that's coming out of Ubi's stable.

 

[the54thvoid]

Nah. A good game gets picked up regardless and then becomes a sleeper hit. Thousands of indies prove you wrong. They don't have lots of marketing either, but a few well targeted blurbs are enough.

XDefiant is just 13 in a dozen junk that should be forgotten fast. Much like most that's coming out of Ubi's stable.

I'm not talking about indies. By way of necessity - they need word of mouth. Big publishers can't afford 'sleeper hits.' They need rapid turnaround of profits. Marketing is absolutely essential because of that, and it seems some big publishers have no idea how vital it is.

Indies are different. Smaller budgets, smaller teams, and, I'd argue, a better handle on reaching their market through other channels.

 

[Vayra86]

I'm not talking about indies. By way of necessity - they need word of mouth. Big publishers can't afford 'sleeper hits.' They need rapid turnaround of profits. Marketing is absolutely essential because of that, and it seems some big publishers have no idea how vital it is.

Indies are different. Smaller budgets, smaller teams, and, I'd argue, a better handle on reaching their market through other channels.

All this tells us is that big publishers have lost themselves in their mainstream push and the only answer is more more more, and as always, something's gonna give. In this case, Ubisoft.

Their model is failing, it always has, but you can escalate for a long time until it all comes crashing down. This is the same trend you see in capitalism as a whole. It worked for a long time for many people, and now we see why it also doesn't work and has never worked for as long as that.

Models need adjusting, clearly, because we're in so deep we barely understand them ourselves. Ubisoft failing like this is a sign of that and you see a lot more companies with lots of cashflow with similar issues. They're old world, surpassed in every way, their strategy fails.

The problem evidently, isn't marketing. The problem is information and commercial overload. More has become too much, and you are saying 'more marketing' fixes this issue. That's just throwing more of the same solutions at the same problems, resulting in the same outcomes. Attention can only be spent once.

 

[AcE]

Maybe don’t bring soul less games then you don’t have to get rid of them later?

 

[wNotyarD]

A lot of publishers forget that marketing is more important for a multi-million dollar product than anything else these days. They spend 'x' amount making a game, then release it with almost no fanfare. It's amazing they haven't learned.

People will talk about good game design, mechanics etc, but that's no use if nobody hears about it. Even then, there are so many IPs out there, the game has to have something special (an existing well known IP - Marvels Rivals, Stalker 2, etc).

Ubisoft was defiant of the x.

Ok, I'll see myself out after this one.

 

[the54thvoid]

All this tells us is that big publishers have lost themselves in their mainstream push and the only answer is more more more, and as always, something's gonna give. In this case, Ubisoft.

Their model is failing, it always has, but you can escalate for a long time until it all comes crashing down. This is the same trend you see in capitalism as a whole. It worked for a long time for many people, and now we see why it also doesn't work and has never worked for as long as that.

Models need adjusting, clearly, because we're in so deep we barely understand them ourselves. Ubisoft failing like this is a sign of that and you see a lot more companies with lots of cashflow with similar issues. They're old world, surpassed in every way, their strategy fails.

The problem evidently, isn't marketing. The problem is information and commercial overload. More has become too much, and you are saying 'more marketing' fixes this issue. That's just throwing more of the same solutions at the same problems, resulting in the same outcomes. Attention can only be spent once.

I had never heard of this game. The third post was the same. You can't just sneak out games and hope they'll hit. Marketing is very important. I work in a realm where publishing is everything and getting traction or even reach is impossible without marketing, whether that's social media or full-on 'adverts' placed in fanzines or sites.

I agree there is too much of the same being made, but there's a limited number of variants on a theme anyone can do. Marketing can make something stand out, even if it's almost the same as what's already there.

You've made it clear in previous posts what you think of the industry, and I agree - it's gotten too big and too reliant on huge cash flow. But even a new game with a new ideal needs to reach its audience. And when we're talking about the bigger companies that want to make millions of dollars in profit, that game needs to reach a huge audience.

I think splitting the idea of the industry into indie and corporate makes sense for our discussion. The indie developers and publishers are very different beasts from the regurgitating giants.