XDefiant boss denies that Ubisoft’s shooter is struggling for players

Ubisoft's free-to-play FPS XDefiant has been criticized for not having enough players. In its year-one update, Ubisoft said that the game is "doing very well" despite the fact that there is always room for improvement in terms of technical and content aspects.

"I'd like to quickly address the current status of the game." Is the game dying? Mark, who I believe to be XDefiant's executive producer Mark Rubin, wrote in the update. "No, it is not dead. "We know that there are some things we can improve, like Netcode/Hitreg or adding more content for progression. But the game is doing very well."

"We want it to be better. We do this by addressing the concerns and issues of our community, which was always the plan. Ubisoft has been very supportive and has allocated additional resources to our team to enable us to achieve this."

Rubin's comments were prompted by a number of reports that XDefiant was in a bad state, including an Insider Gaming piece that claimed XDefiant was on "borrowed" time, and a comment made recently by Midcap Partners analyst Charles Louis Planade who stated earlier in September that XDefiant had not maintained its high level of interest despite a strong launch.

XDefiant doesn't appear on Steam, so we can't look at concurrent player counts. However, the numbers on TwitchTracker (which monitors Twitch viewership) are not encouraging. From a peak of over 203,000 concurrent viewers in may 2024, XDefiant has fewer than 1000 people watching. Valorant is currently being watched by 101,000 people. This is not necessarily a sign that something is wrong, as Twitch rankings don't always reflect popularity. The most popular shooters are also the most competitive. XDefiant, for example, is less competitive than Valorant, or even Ubisoft’s other FPS Rainbow Six Siege. It's not encouraging, but it's also not a sign of distress.

Ubisoft’s recent offer to give $9 in-game currency as a reward for playing XDefiant did not exactly change the impression that this game was in trouble. Why would you pay people to play a game unless it was absolutely necessary?

Some of us, who are less cynical, might think that Ubisoft does not need people to play XDefiant and that they're just doing something fun to celebrate the end its first season. While XDefiant has been compared to Call of Duty in some circles, the stakes in this game are much lower. It is being made by a small team on a smaller budget. This allows Ubisoft to play the longer game instead of just cashing out when trouble arises.

A turnaround would not be unprecedented. Ubisoft’s medieval clobberin’ game, For Honor, suffered serious growing pains following its launch in 2017. While it was never a concurrent-player juggernaut it has been a reliable and low-key workhorse that ticks along steadily with several thousand players at any one time. If given a chance, XDefiant could find a niche similar to For Honor.

Rubin also spoke about the ongoing work to improve XDefiant’s netcode and hit-registration, stating that Ubisoft had enlisted the help of more "specialist engineering" engineers. "This is a huge task, but everyone works as hard as they can to get this work done as soon as possible," wrote Rubin. It's difficult to give a solid estimation of when it will be finished because iteration and testing takes a long time. We're hoping for something by the end of Season 2, if not earlier.