Another day passes, another live service game bites the dust. Ubisoft's XDefiant showed flashes of brilliance since its release a year ago, but that was not enough to impress its parent company. In December 2024, Ubisoft pulled the game from all storefronts, issued refunds for packs, and announced XDefiant would go dark in June.
A central figure to the rise and fall of XDefiant was its executive producer, Mark Rubin. He made his mark in the industry as the executive producer for Infinity Ward between 2005 and 2015, overseeing what's widely regarded as the best era of Call of Duty.
After 6 years working at Ubisoft, Rubin has announced that he is leaving not just the company, but the industry altogether. The reveal came at the end of a post going into the troubles faced by XDefiant from launch to closure.
Why Did XDefiant Fail?
Analyzing the downfall of a game is a little like giving a room a deep clean or engaging in an urban firefight—it's important to work top to bottom.
At first glance, XDefiant looked like a promising title with unrealized potential. Polygon's Cass Marshall described it as 'Tom Clancy's Smash Bros.', but lacking that "spark that...
