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.

Valve's next-gen hero shooter, Deadlock, has been making waves lately, with a recent update addressing cheating in a rather comical way. Now, it looks like the developers are putting in more work to both expand the game's hero roster and bring it up to feature-parity with other modern MMOs and PvP shooters. According to the changelog for the October 24 Deadlock update, Valve has added six new heroes to the game alongside some much-needed bug fixes, visual tweaks, and new social features.

The biggest news is obviously the new heroes, which, despite being added to the game, aren't quite ready for prime time just yet. As such, Valve has created a new experimental mode called Hero Labs, where players will be able to test new, potentially incomplete, heroes and provide feedback to the developers. The preliminary names for the six new heroes are Holliday, Calico, Wrecker, Fathom, Viper, and Magician, and Valve developer, Yoshi, is clear that these new heroes are still works-in-progress, with Magician in particular lacking his own ultimate ability. New heroes aren't the only changes coming to Deadlock, though, and Valve's update notes include a new character shader and better sky and environment illumination, a commend feature to show appreciation to other players, and a slew of balance changes to just about every character in the game.

Valve's latest third-person MOBA-like hero shooter, Deadlock, has had a pretty serious cheater problem, despite still being an invite-only public test. While the game has thus far operated on a player reporting system to identify and punish cheaters, a recent game patch has introduced a rather comical—and seemingly effective—anti-cheat system that can either ban cheating players or turn them into frogs until the end of the match.

Valve says that the new anti-cheat system is set up to be fairly conservative at the moment to avoid any false positives. Aside from the new anti-cheat, Deadlock's September 26 update introduced a new hero, Mirage, whose design and gameplay seem rooted in the jinn from Arabic myths (aka djinn or genie) and added a pretty vast collection of gameplay updates, balances, and quality-of-life improvements throughout the game.

Season 2 of The Finals launches on March 14, and strange things are happening in the arena. The game show has been compromised by the rogue hacking collective CNS, and showrunners are scrambling to decipher their cryptic messages—but one thing is clear: the show must go on! Throughout the jam-packed season of this free-to-play game, contestants can experience new weapons for each class, the hacked new map SYS$HORIZON, the all-new 5v5 game mode Power Shift, a new skill-based League System, rewarded weekly career progression, private matches—for now in a feature-limited beta version—and the new Hacker Playstyle, which adds several ways for contestants to alter the arena to their favor.

THE Finals' new Hacker Playstyle lets players step into the shoes of CNS, with a set of new gadgets and a new specialization that can be mixed and matched with players' existing toolset. Remove walls, defy gravity, tunnel across the arena, and transform items—become the glitch in the system, the ultimate cyber tactician, and bring a new dimension to the game.

Today, Ubisoft announced that BattleCore Arena, a free-to-play competitive platform shooter, is under development at Ubisoft Bordeaux and coming to PC via Ubisoft Connect and Steam. Playing as a spherical core, players will enter multi-tiered maps and contend with gravitational forces as they roll, dash, jump, and double-jump to outmaneuver their opponents with physics-based movement. Players will also be able to eject (or be ejected by) their opponents as they wield a multi-faceted arsenal, featuring ranged weapons for close-range impact or mid-distance power, as well as perks to help them evade danger, knock out enemies, or aid their allies.

BattleCore Arena is a PvP game with competitive modes including Backup, a 3v3 team deathmatch; Golden Core, in which possession of the eponymous Core is the path to victory; and Free-for-all, a fast-paced way to test your solo skills or warm up before climbing the ladder in ranked matches. Players can customize their core with cosmetic options for armor, lights, banners, elimination explosions, and more so they can show off their style while zipping around the arenas. If you live in Europe, you can register to participate in the BattleCore Arena tech test running from February 1 through February 5. Stay tuned to Ubisoft News for more on BattleCore Arena.

Starting October 26, 2023, Embark Studios is hosting the first cross-platform Open Beta for THE FINALS, the team-based, free-to-play shooter that pushes environmental dynamism, destruction, and player freedom to the limits. The test will run on Xbox Series X|S, PlayStation 5, and Steam and ends on November 5.

THE FINALS is the ultimate combat entertainment game show where you and your team fight for fame, riches, and the favor of generous seasonal sponsors, in hyper-realistic, fully destructible Virtual Arenas inspired by iconic real-worldlocations. The Open Beta introduces the brand new Skyway Stadium arena to the map
rotation, along with an all-new game mode—Bank-It. Additionally, the beta includes a free BattlePass with 16 exclusive, permanent rewards that players can
unlock and keep for launch. The beta features cross-play and cross-progression between PC and consoles.

After four years away, BlizzCon is returning to Anaheim, California on November 3-4! We're so excited to get everyone together again, celebrate our communities, and share what we've been working on. This year, the goal is to make BlizzCon feel more experiential than ever before. It will be a one-of-a-kind immersive experience, bringing attendees into the universes of Warcraft, Diablo, and Overwatch with massive installations, art, and thematic spaces where friends can connect.

Whether you're kicking back in Azeroth, exploring the mysteries of a dark cathedral of Sanctuary, playing alongside the heroes of Overwatch, or tuning in from home, we want you to feel you are entering universes alongside your friends as you celebrate and experience what we're building next, and hear from developers all across Blizzard about their vision for our games, their craft, and more. This is the first time we are building BlizzCon this way, and our vision is that building a giant playground for our communities will allow everyone to create memories, share stories, and celebrate what unites us. Here's what you need to know!

XDefiant will launch later this summer, but players won't have to wait that long to play a few more rounds of the free-to-play PVP shooter. Announced at Ubisoft Forward, XDefiant will be running an Open Session for all players on PC, PS5, and Xbox Series X|S from June 21-23; sign up by going to PlayXDefiant.com. Anyone who participated in the Closed Beta in April can log in a day early to participate in a special Early Access phase of the Open Session starting on June 20. Over one million players played in the Closed Beta, which was integral in helping the team test myriad aspects of the game and gather feedback.

"We received a lot of great feedback from our players after the end of our Closed Beta," says creative director Safy Saada, "and for the Open Session, we'll likely see some new faction balancing (particularly for Libertad) based on player feedback, as well as weapon balancing based on data we've collected from the Closed Beta."