The early closure of Ubisoft’s free FPS, XDefiant, has claimed a notable victim: after twenty years in the video game industry, producer Mark Rubin has decided to leave the company and retire from game development.
In an post on on Twitter/X, the former Executive Producer at Ubisoft reflected on the reasons behind the failure of XDefiant and announced his decision to step away from the video game industry to “spend more time with my family so unfortunately you won’t be hearing about me making another game.”
He further stated that he will always be closely connected to the world of first-person shooter games, and hopes someone else can take the lead on this or other projects, creating games that focus on players, respect them, and listen to their feedback.
Rubin also expressed pride in the work done with the XDefiant development team and the initial success of the free FPS game. He pointed out that “something remarkable happened with XDefiant is 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.”
Upon its launch, The Outerhaven’s review of XDefiant gave it a score of 3.5 out of 5, stating, “XDefiant is off to a good start, but to compete with the likes of Call of Duty or Overwatch, it still needs some tweaks and additional content.”
