Former Call of Duty producer reflects on XDefiant closure, announces he’s ’leaving the industry’

The exec producer of Ubisoft shooter XDefiant says he’s leaving the games industry for good, after the company closed the game earlier this week.

On Tuesday, June 3, Ubisoft closed the servers for XDefiant, a first-person shooter that was well received, but ultimately failed to find a sizable audience, partly due to tech issues and a slow rollout of new content.

Announcing the news late last year, Ubisoft confirmed it would be closing the San Francisco studio behind the game, but claimed almost half of the team would be redeployed around Ubisoft.

Posting on X this week, following the closure, producer Mark Rubin said it was a “sad day” and announced that he had decided to “leave the industry”.

Before XDefiant, Rubin was a producer on Call of Duty at Infinity Ward, notably working on the Modern Warfare series.

“It’s a sad day for fans of XDefiant and for all of the passionate devs that worked so hard on this game,” Rubin wrote. “I want to thank everyone who played it and everyone who promoted it whether you were a big content creator or just a fan. Every voice mattered.”

He continued: “In fact, I would say something remarkable happened with this game in that although we had very little marketing, we still had the fastest acquisition of players in the first few weeks for a Ubisoft title just from you guys all talking about and promoting the game. But unfortunately, with little to no marketing, especially after launch, we weren’t acquiring new players after the initial launch.”

Rubin went on to acknowledge other “issues” his team experienced during development, including “crippling tech debt using an engine that wasn’t designed for what we were doing”, and netcode issues “that we could just not solve”.

The producer also bemoaned what he claimed to be a lack of resources needed to make content for XDefiant, claiming that what was included up to the game’s final season “wasn’t even enough content in my mind for launch”.

“There were some really cool features coming later in Season 4 or even 5 that would have completed the game in a way that I felt it should have been for launch. I can say everyone’s (devs, HQ leadership, etc.) heart was in the right place but we just didn’t have the gas to go the distance for a free-to-play game,” he said.

Rubin’s lengthy post ends by thanking all of the developers who worked on XDefiant, and praising them for the work that they did.

“The cards were heavily stacked against you, but you managed to produce a really fun and terrific game! And I like to call it out every time I talk about it, but I think our maps were some of the best maps ever made for an arcade shooter. So, congrats to everyone for what they accomplished.

“I also think we made a decent impact in the space. We saw a lot of reactions from other games to what we were doing and that to me speaks volumes. I’m really sorry we couldn’t quite deliver and maintain this game for a longer time.”

Rubin continued: “In case everyone doesn’t know, the team behind XDefiant was all let go at the end of last year and I know many people have moved on to other studios, which is great, and I hope that for all of those still looking, that they find something quickly. As for me, I’ve decided to leave the industry and spend more time with my family so unfortunately you won’t be hearing about me making another game.

“I do care passionately about the shooter space and hope that someone else can pick up the flag that I was trying to carry and make games again that care about the players, treat them with respect and listen to what they have to say.”