XDefiant’s Mark Rubin Denies Launch Is Delayed Because Studio Is “Chasing” Call of Duty

XDefiant developer Mark Rubin has disputed a report regarding the unreleased title.

We have to talk about the report first, which comes from Insider Gaming. The outlet has been reporting on this game for some time, but all the news they have are based on internal sources, and are essentially rumors.

We had reported on their news about plans to release before the end of this financial year. That report itself was dated in February, and more recently, they had a more negative report on the title.

Insider Gaming’s sources claim that the plan was to actually release XDefiant on the last week of February, which they had obviously were not able to do. Their sources also claim years of missed internal targets, with frustration growing among the devs themselves.

Mainly, the source claims an executive at Ubisoft has been trying to copy Call of Duty instead of making it its own game. Quoting this source:

“The neverending hunt to chase COD and add pointless stuff always breaks the current build.”

And this is where Mark Rubin comes in. Mark’s name is recognizable as a former Call of Duty developer himself. It certainly looks like the rumor was alluding to him, as it would make sense that there was a perception that Mark is still trying to make Call of Duty, only for Ubisoft.

Mark replied to a fan who complained on his Twitter with this very accusation, saying:

“Just FYI, nothing about our delay is due to any new features. In fact not much has changed from a gameplay standpoint. The delay has been due to the tech issues we’ve talked about. Whoever said chasing CoD in Tom’s report was major eyeroll.”

Mark then shared more information, replying to another fan who complained that XDefiant won’t have killcams:

“If we put killcams in now (they are being worked on) then we would be delayed even more. The whole point of the delay was to lock the game and just put in bug fixes and the new updated netcode and social systems.”

At this point, it certainly seems that whether you believe Rubin or not all depends on how you feel about XDefiant in general. Ubisoft is definitely not the only video game company that keeps their behind the scenes drama away from public eyes. In this case, though, we have a public response to the claims.

While this did not come in the form of a formal press release, it’s still the developer directly addressing the rumors. We can’t say that all we have to go on are rumors. We will eventually find out who is telling the truth, when the game releases, or perhaps, when it doesn’t.