Far Cry Publisher’s Latest Game Flop Had a Cool Idea Worth a Second Look

It is the end of the road for yet another live service. This time, troubled game publisher Ubisoft announced that its competitive free-to-play shooter clash with Phantoms from Ghost Recon. For Splinter Cell fans, it was nice to see a new Ubisoft game acknowledge the existence of Third Echelon, the secret bureaucratic task force at the center of the stealth action series.

XDefiant’s door was wide open for other Ubisoft games to join the fray. Adding operators from Rainbow Six Siege or Templars and Assassins were easy no brainers that was surely in in the works for future seasons. And while the inclusion of Far Cry 6’s Freedom Fighters felt like the odd one out of the five starting factions, it sparked the potential for weirder adds down the line. If Ubisoft San Francisco wanted to go as wacky as Fortnite, a limited time Rayman or Beyond Good and Evil faction would have made for some hilarious fun.

Unfortunately, the game really went all-in on capturing an audience a fairly miniscule audience. Appealing to gamers discussing niche things like the quality of matchmaking in Call of Duty ignores the millions more who couldn’t care less. I don’t think there was ever a world where players ditched the latest Call of Duty outright for an off-brand competitor trying to bring back the good old days. Not as long as Remastered versions of games like 2009’s Modern Warfare 2 are readily available.

The faction-based crossover aspect of XDefiant was deeply underrated. And it’s a shame that it’s potential was paired with a game up against the industry’s most dominating juggernauts. There’s no denying that both Ubisoft teams gave it their all and in some ways succeeded. But this was a losing battle right from the start.

XDefiant’s shutdown is the latest blemish in a year full of disappointment for Ubisoft. One of the publisher’s biggest games of the year, Star Wars Outlaws, underperformed in retail sales. It delayed Assassin’s Creed Shadows out of 2024, marking the first time the franchise has missed its holiday release date. It released a useless NFT game to no buzz in the year of our lord 2024. And all of this has occurred as rumors of a potential buy out by Chinese mega-publisher Tencent looms overhead.