XDefiant's final hours have arrived, and I'm sad to see Ubisoft's FPS go

XDefiant was a game that always had the odds stacked against it, despite the wealth of FPS experience on its development team and major IP like Far Cry and Assassin’s Creed it could lean on. Ubisoft was already on a run of putting out underperforming games. The general live service space is a brutal, unforgiving one. The demand for new, fresh content is painfully high. And then it had to face off against one of the best annual Call of Duty launches we’ve seen in years with Black Ops 6. When you lay everything out in such a way, a rapid shutdown - which arrives this week just over a year after launching - always seemed highly likely. Inevitable, to some. But that doesn’t mean it was a bad FPS game by any stretch. While not perfect, I’ll remember XDefiant as a game that provided me with a few months of fun and a welcome reminder of the glory days of Call of Duty.