Mark Rubin

@NerosCinema Me too. The challenge of making that game was immense but I still loved the heart of what it was trying to do.

I still miss XDefiant

@Raino_rox @Cc99X_YT I miss it too. In a more suitable engine (Snowdrop is great but turned out to be not suitable for what we needed) and with more of the right type of devs to make content the game i think could have done really well.

@PixelsofMark @Cc99X_YT I everyday see still people in reddit always post that they miss this game so much . Such a wonderful game 😮‍💨😮‍💨😮‍💨

Saw the rumor from Bloomberg that we were working on Splinter Cell game before switching to Xdefiant. I can say that is not true. When I got to Ubisoft they had been working on a game for a year that was very ambitious but was struggling to find the fun. And it was NOT a Splinter Cell game. I then canceled that one and let the team pitch any game ideas they wanted. There were some cool ones but I felt the scope/difficulty was too hard on some ideas so we stuck with an arena shooter and we found the fun quickly. So no we didn't pivot off Splinter Cell to make XDefiant. Now maybe they were thinking about working on Splinter Cell before I got there but it was never a thing while I was there. My experience with Ubisoft was they are very open to whatever the studio wants to do which is great but I do wish we could have used external engines.

@Cc99X_YT Not to me.

@PixelsofMark Probably a bit late to ask but did Vantage studio express any interest in XDefiant?

@elevated_one122 Appreciate it but im not working on any games right now.

@PixelsofMark hello Mark if dis new project need any fix's i could fix the problem before released it i could say the FPS SHOOTERS and commonality wants 1) drag players to cover REVIVE 2) MOVEMENT ROLLING ON THE FLOOR WOW U EAGLE TRIAL THE OTHER PLAYERS AND slide

@HitmanNumber86 @de3dsoul Hehe...it is a great pic.

@de3dsoul @PixelsofMark they're swooning over you again.

One of the hardest images of all time

@SeaGL_ Yup. CoD4 and MW2 covers were both me and created by our amazing art director Other titles were made by an agency but I liked those two the best.

@PixelsofMark Hey, that's you

I just saw that Vince Zampella passed away yesterday in a car crash. I had to read it multiple times to believe it. He was an amazing mentor and friend. He will be sorely missed. My heart goes out to his family. RIP my friend!

Christmas when you have a cat. 🎄🐈 #Christmas #cat

Oh and just to add, Dispatch is an amazing game! Well done @theAdHocStudio !!! I never met those guys that left Ubisoft as they left before I got there. Seems like some really great talent! Congrats!

Just to be clear, because @jasonschreier reached out to tell me the article said that SC was in development in 2017 and I got there in 2019 and that is correct. What my message was trying to convey was that at no time when I was at Ubisoft was the SF team working on SC and that project was not canceled to make XDefiant. My beef with the article is that there was an implied action of canceling SC to make XDefiant and that is untrue. Maybe that wasn't intentional which is fine. Just trying to convey the real truth. That being said I really appreciate all the love for XDefiant! Sorry it didn't work out the way we had hoped. Love you all!

@AJakOfAllTradez Here and there. I see new reddit posts almost every day. Sad because I think if we were on a more suitable engine (Snowdrop is a great engine, it just wasn't suitable for what we were doing) we might have had more success long term.

@PixelsofMark Hey Mark. Hope you're doing well. How often are you still asked about XDefiant?

@NerosCinema Happy to see this if true. I just want games to be fun. And for me strict SBMM made it less so.

@S0_KJY Real, but based on the IP supplied by the clients. Which means locations can be vague. Also, I don't remember how often it updated.

@Weingarthmathis Merci! Et merci d'etre un fan!

@PixelsofMark Merci @PixelsofMark je sais que tu vas pas comprendre mon message, mais je t'envoie tout l'amour possible à toi et ta nouvelle vie. J'ai créé énormément de contenu sur ce jeu, ces grâce à ce jeu que j'ai pue le crée une petite communauté sur YouTube, merci beaucoup à toi ❤️

It’s a sad day for fans of XDefiant and for all of the passionate devs that worked so hard on this game. 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. 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. We had other issues though as well that we tried to be transparent about. For one we had crippling tech debt using an engine that wasn’t designed for what we were doing, and we didn’t have the engineering resources to ever correct that. I do personally think that in-house engines are not the valuable investment that they used to be and they are often doomed to fall behind big engines like Unreal. This tech debt included the dreaded netcode issues that we could just not solve given the architecture we were dealing with. And so, for many players with solid network connections (in both speed and consistent reliability) the game played well but if your connection had even the smallest amount of inconsistency the engine just couldn’t handle it and you would have a bad experience. Normally, you should be able to weather those bad moments on your network. But this was a major issue with XDefiant. Another issue we had was having the right resources to make content for the game. What we saw at Season 3 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. So again, I really want to praise and salute all of the devs that worked on XDefiant! 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. 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. Thank you again to everyone who had so much passion for XDefiant.

@ACHES He's not wrong. @ACHES may have built a "colorful" persona in the CoD space but in real life he's a super nice guy. But don't let him know i said that. 🤣

People always seem to forget…COD is the WWE of esports. Nature of the game. Coaches just need to get up there and talk some trash and be entertaining 🤷🏻‍♂️

@YareckxPRx @yidspur1981 @999Ginoo A kill cam feature was actually coming S4, maybe S5. We had it working 1st and 3rd person, but the data was coming from the client watching the killcam and not the server. That was the last bit of work to do.

@yidspur1981 @PixelsofMark @999Ginoo Bro, before before the game closed, when the game has a lot players. Mark and him team, promised put kll cam, and what happen? Cheaters coming because you can't know if him are hacking or no

@999Ginoo We know but didn't have the people to fix it.

@PixelsofMark Idk why u didnt hear at the Community at the end, the ranked mode was Not Playable since start to end

@OliverWW_ @Meyhem33 @PlayXDefiant As a free to play game we did have fomo content although one of the features that was coming was a way to earn a currency by just playing to buy old content. But as far as marketing we barely had any marketing budget.

@PixelsofMark @Meyhem33 @PlayXDefiant Fomo marketing? Xdefiant had plenty of fomo

@PlayXDefiant @PixelsofMark Just finished another session. I miss the game, and it's not even gone. Thank you for making a game with fans in mind. Activision deserves what's happening to them for putting money and greed over just making a game that's "fun". I'll NEVER go back.