We recently spoke to one of the embedded QA testers who worked on XDefiant, and they detailed what the development process was like and how the team hated the Hot Shot game mode.
Mark Rubin, the lead designer of Ubisoft’s now-dead free-to-play shooter XDefiant, has left the games industry following his project’s death.
So much wrong with Xdefiant. At one point they started using the worst ideas for their game and FPS fans saw it in the previews.
"We had other issues though as well that we tried to be transparent about. For one we had crippling tech debt using an engine that wasn’t designed for what we were doing...Another issue we had was having the right resources to make content for the game."
Ubi set them up for failure out of the gate. And he says they had stuff in the pipes that should have been at launch means Ubi rushed it out and the devs didn't.
Ubisoft multiplayer XDefiant has only one day left until servers are shut down, leaving players a short time to claim refunds.
I knew it was DoA. They had their chance when the entire community hated MW3. It bounced back and did a dropshot 360 no-scope on XDefiant. That was it.
Paul Tassi: "Sony recently reiterated its commitment to live service games with one big hit last year (Helldivers 2), one big cancellation (The Last of Us Factions) and one big failure (Concord). It’s no great surprise it is continuing down this road, given the way the industry is trending and the limited shelf life of its famed single player games. But it immediately made me think of a game that Sony is allegedly releasing that I have to believe is pre-destined to fail, Fairgame$."
Fairgame$ feels like it's destined to flop out the gate- that initial trailer felt full of that same instantly-dated 'fight The Man with a ragtag team of weirdos' energy that was prevalent in Sega's Hyenas (which they wisely cancelled.) Unlike Marathon I just don't see this standing a chance.
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