There are many companies who are becoming “punching bags” for certain kinds of jokes within the gaming industry right now, and Ubisoft is arguably the biggest “target” right now. Oh, but don’t get us wrong, the reason that they’re a punching bag is well deserved. For basically the last year or so, they’ve put themselves out on a limb many times over to highlight the “big games” that were coming that gamers would be “fools not to play,” only to drop incredibly average or broken titles that weren’t worth playing. Then, there XDefiant, which was a free-to-play shooter that Ubisoft was using to try and capitalize on the monetization market.
If you’ve been paying attention to this title, you’ll know that it fell into a familiar trap of “It has a high player count when it launches, but then it sank like a stone.” That’s something that’s been happening to many such titles recently, and Ubisoft’s game was no different. Despite it only coming out in May, there were numerous reports about it dying, which Ubisoft denied. However, its own CEO admitted that the game was “falling behind expectations,” which is a recurring theme for them in recent times.
Fast forward to now, and a leaker is claiming that if things don’t improve, XDefiant won’t make it past Season 4:
Obviously, since this is a leaker, you can’t trust them just because they put this out there. However, there is something to note here: Ubisoft is not doing well behind the scenes. Rumors swirl that there is a potential buyout in the works and that the CEO is in hot water for all the failures that have been happening recently. Thus, what happens next will be interesting to see unfold.
What’s truly happening here is a company that promises to do great things, doesn’t deliver those great things, is stunned when it doesn’t work out the way it wants it to, and then blames everyone but itself for the losses it takes. CEO Yves Guillemot, in one statement, blamed gamers for “not buying solid games” after some of the company’s failures in 2024. Except, it was that very CEO who promised that a certain pirate title was a “AAAA game,” and it wasn’t even close to that. Oh, and it wasn’t even close to “solid.”
Then, the company’s monetization director came out and said that “non-decent humans” were to blame for certain games not being sold and for many wishing that Ubisoft would die. Clearly, this company has issues from top to bottom.
