Former XDefiant executive producer Mark Rubin has announced he will be permanently stepping away from video game development after the first-person shooter was shut down this week. Rubin has become a household name in the gaming community after working on numerous Call of Duty titles, but the developer says fans won't be hearing about him making another video game again after Ubisoft opted to shut down XDefiant just a year after its launch.
After working as an executive producer at Infinity Ward, developing various Call of Duty titles such as the original Modern Warfare and its 2009 sequel, Rubin joined Ubisoft in 2019 as an executive game director and producer for XDefiant. The free-to-play first-person shooter was quickly dubbed by fans as a "Call of Duty killer," due to its lack of skill-based matchmaking, fast gameplay, and well-thought-out map design. Unfortunately, a little over six months after its release in May 2024, Ubisoft announced that the title would be shut down. The studio continued to release its Season 3 update, but XDefiant's servers were sadly shut down on June 4.
Although there is a fan revival effort, I used to spend hours in...
