Ubisoft and XDefiant’s Mark Rubin Goes to Desperate Lengths to Boost the Player Count as it Freefalls

XDefiant, the free-to-play first-person shooter title finally released back in May this year after a couple of delays. The game was being called a Call of Duty killer and looked to compete with Warzone.

It received mixed reviews upon launch but did good numbers during the early days as many players jumped in to check it out. However, it seems like the game is losing players and developers are going to desperate lengths to save it.

Mark Rubin Is Desperately Trying to Revive XDefiant

XDefiant gathered interest from gamers as it brought multiple factions from games like Far Cry, Watch Dogs, and Tom Clancy. Players excitedly waited for the game, but a couple months after its release, the game started losing players due to several reasons.

Players reported major issues such as bugs and glitches with problems like stuttering and ability disbalances. While this was already bad, players are also now getting banned without any reason, and game’s executive producer Mark Rubin is seemingly not going to let the game lose more players.

One player took to X/Twitter and tagged Rubin, telling him that they were permanently banned from the game. They said this is their first ban, and despite contacting the support, they did not get any clarity on why they were banned. They added, “I’m hurt that I can no longer play with my friends.”

What’s your ubiconnect name. I’ll lookup why you were banned.

— Mark Rubin (@PixelsofMark) July 28, 2024

Rubin replied to the player and asked the player their UbisoftConnect username to look into why they were banned. It seems like Rubin is not ready for the player numbers to drop anymore and also wants to make it right for the player if they were wrongly banned.

XDefiant Player Numbers Are a Worry for the Developer

The game achieved 1 million unique players within two and a half hours of its launch worldwide despite the game having server issues. It also recorded more than half a million concurrent players on launch day.

This was the fastest ever player numbers reached by a Ubisoft title. It also achieved the milestone of three million unique players after 48 hours with 300,000 concurrent players, however, the game has faced a lot of issues since then.

This has resulted in many players quitting the game and despite adding new weapons, modes, and bringing patch updates to fix things, it has been the same. The developer needs to try harder and bring something unique to the arena shooter if it wants to really compete with any other shooter title.

What are your thought about the game losing players? Have you played the game yet? Let us know in the comments below!