Despite Unceremoniously Shutting Down, XDefiant Surpassed Apex Legends to Become the Fastest Title to Hit 1 Million Players

[Pelican Press 0]

This is the hidden content, please

• Sign In
• or
• Sign Up

Despite Unceremoniously Shutting Down, XDefiant Surpassed Apex Legends to Become the Fastest Title to Hit 1 Million Players

Ubisoft has been in rocky waters as of late, with multiple titles such as Assassin’s Creed Shadows facing a massive number of setbacks. One of the more tragic things to happen was the closure of the popular free-to-play first-person competitive shooter, XDefiant.

This is in spite of XDefiant amassing a rather impressive number of players at launch (1 million, to be precise) – overshadowing even the likes of Apex Legends. However, player counts do not mean everything, and there is a lot more to attribute to the failure of this particular live service title.

XDefiant overtook Apex Legends to become one of the fastest-growing games back during its launch

This is the hidden content, please

• Sign In
• or
• Sign Up

As revealed by

This is the hidden content, please

• Sign In
• or
• Sign Up

back in May, 2024, Ubisoft’s then recently launched XDefiant managed to hit a major milestone during launch day – nearly 1 million unique players logging into the game.

This was quite an impressive number, and was followed by claims of 300,000 active players (across all platforms) a mere 48 hours after its launch. To compare, Respawn Entertainment’s incredibly popular battle royale Apex Legends trailed far behind in this regard – managing 1 million players in about 8 hours (as compared to Ubisoft’s 2.5 hours).

All of this made it stand out as Ubisoft’s most successful live-service launch yet, and XDefiant was for a time, booming. There was a lot of hype surrounding the game, and for good reason – it offered a fresh experience from a then reputable publisher, and ticked all the boxes for success.

That is most certainly not the case right now, and Ubisoft has managed to enrage its player base by announcing a shutdown of XDefiant’s servers on June 2, 2025 after which the game will be permanently delisted from all digital storefronts.

This is despite Ubisoft ‘assuring’ players that the game would not be shut down. Much of this can be attributed to Ubisoft (and the game) itself, which has fallen into a slump of late, undergoing stagnation and facing overwhelming odds as it struggles to appeal to both investors and players alike.

This is the hidden content, please

• Sign In
• or
• Sign Up

Apex managed to get back up on its feet, and still manages to keep a sizable, active player base. On the other hand, XDefiant’s player count steadily decreased over time as players bombarded the game for being too monotonous and non-innovative.

It just paints a picture of how unpredictable the video game industry can be, and how profits dictate everything – especially with regards to live service games.

Ubisoft’s missteps are to blame for XDefiant’s eventual closure

This is the hidden content, please

• Sign In
• or
• Sign Up

The failure of XDefiant can be traced back to multiple issues that stem from Ubisoft itself. Indeed, Ubisoft’s failure to innovate can be targeted as the principal cause. Without innovation, live service games are doomed to fail – after all, a fresh flow of engaging content is what keeps players playing.

This formula of success can be seen in the likes of Call of Duty (which managed to make an impressive comeback with ****** Ops 6, albeit for only a while) and Marvel Rivals, both of which remain popular to this day.

Most players would agree that XDefiant just turned out to be mediocre in the end, not offering anything special that separated it from the competition. In the end, it tried to capture the CoD audience, and miserably failed since these players were never likely to switch gears in the first place.

This is the hidden content, please

• Sign In
• or
• Sign Up

#Unceremoniously #Shutting #XDefiant #Surpassed #Apex #Legends #Fastest #Title #Hit #Million #Players

This is the hidden content, please

• Sign In
• or
• Sign Up

This is the hidden content, please

• Sign In
• or
• Sign Up

0

• Quote

Link to comment

https://hopzone.eu/forums/topic/212478-despite-unceremoniously-shutting-down-xdefiant-surpassed-apex-legends-to-become-the-fastest-title-to-hit-1-million-players/

Share on other sites

---

More sharing options...