Mark Rubin

Executive Producer on @PlayXDefiant at Ubisoft in San Francisco. Previously known for being EP on Call of Duty.

[Mark Rubin @PixelsofMark]

@therealcliffyb I was at GDC one year and was talking to a programmer who used to be a literal rocket scientist and it always stuck with me that he said game coding was way, WAY harder than working as an aerospace programmer.

[Mark Rubin @PixelsofMark]

@TheStryxx I'm counting playing it in development. One of the mantras that I have when developing is that the game needs to be playable everyday. And so we would playtest everyday. Obviously the content was unfinished and buggy but it was still fun even in development.

[Mark Rubin @PixelsofMark]

It's still crazy to me that #XDefiant became the fastest-growing game in Ubisoft history.

Fastest ever to 5 million players and topped out over 15 million players.

That was done not by fancy marketing campaigns but by pure word of mouth. And yea free-to-play of course made that possible but if I did it again I would prefer paid over free-to-play.

But it was absolutely tragic that we couldn't get the netcode in a good enough place and that our cosmetic content was such a struggle.

But I really do miss this game and I played it almost everyday for 6 years. And I still miss playing it.

[Mark Rubin @PixelsofMark]

@Paz_Studios We were missing the tech to really go all out and our pipeline was really slow, so it was hard to have enough content.

[Mark Rubin @PixelsofMark]

@ChanceGlasco @QNDZYcom Will be visiting my wife's family there at some point.

[Mark Rubin @PixelsofMark]

@NerosCinema @QNDZYcom Sadly, nothing i have access to anymore and of course the rules are actually pretty clear. If Ubisoft called and said let's re-release the game I'd be all over it.

[Mark Rubin @PixelsofMark]

I really loved playing XDefiant. It had the same pure fun feel I got from the early CoDs. The tech hurdle unfortunately was too high. I asked to use another engine in the beginning but was told no. Although I wish I had asked harder. I think we did amazing things with few resources. And the game when the servers went down had so much and yet was still barely complete with what we had planned. But unfortunately Ubisoft wasn't in the position to support our game and we were an expensive team being in SF. I don't blame them for that. I do miss the team though. I hope everyone is doing well.

[Mark Rubin @PixelsofMark]

@chadieladdie23 @ACHES I miss it too! That would be up to Ubisoft I imagine they could if they wanted to but I think they have a lot going on right now staying afloat.

[Mark Rubin @PixelsofMark]

@B0AV0 I wish. The engine doesn't support offline or private servers. At least it didn't when I was there. To be honest the engine didn't handle our high-speed fps very well and we didn't have the people to make it work. But I would have loved having private servers and mods.

[Mark Rubin @PixelsofMark]

@RandomGamerX64 Consider the date of the post.

[Mark Rubin @PixelsofMark]

@Van434650386159 Won't be playable as far as I know but I dont work at Ubisoft anymore. Not sure why you can still download.

[Mark Rubin @PixelsofMark]

Hello Everyone,

So here it is! Our last content patch for XDefiant. It’s obviously a bittersweet moment but I just want to say how proud I am of everyone on this team that did everything they could to make this game and all of its amazing content.

Ubisoft has not only allowed a small team to stay on and continue working to get our Season 3 content out the door, but we’ve also been able to add some extra content to this release from future seasons. So, we have our Season 3 content plus some of the content from Season 4, 5, 6,7 and even Season 8.

We are adding 3 new factions this patch with the Assassin’s of course that was planned for Season 3 but also Wolves and Omega Force from Seasons 4 and 5 respectively.

We are also adding 6 new Arena Maps and 3 new Linear Maps from future seasons. So along with the 4 new maps from Season 3 that’s a total of 13 new maps. And I have to say the team really went all out on these amazing new maps. If you do anything at all, you need to check out the new Rayman map that was going to be part of an epic event takeover in Season 4. It even has it’s own mode with Lum Hunt.

We’ve added a brand-new experience called Tactical that is all about corridor style maps with the first mode in that experience called Defuse; a 1-life classic Bomb mode.

We’ve added the ability to play against Bots in a way that would have allowed players to warm up or just chill out with less pressure but still gaining XP.

There are a few new weapons that were supposed to come in future seasons as well. Along with new cosmetics that have all been unlocked for everyone. There is new progression mechanics with Faction Mastery and Badges that the community would have to come together to discover how they all can be earned.

All of this and more are our last tribute to all of the hard-working people that made this game and to all of the fans who have been with us through this journey. Not all journeys end well but we can all be proud of what we accomplished.

I wish everyone who worked on this game directly or indirectly the best for their future endeavors. And the same goes for all of the fans who played our game, who streamed it, or who worked to build the XDefiant community.

Thank you all!
Mark

Link to Patch Notes:
https://t.co/oajlGAUoot

[XDefiant @PlayXDefiant]

https://t.co/M9cNXq6fZ7

[Mark Rubin @PixelsofMark]

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

[Mark Rubin @PixelsofMark]

@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.

[Mark Rubin @PixelsofMark]

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.

[Mark Rubin @PixelsofMark]

@Cc99X_YT Not to me.

[Mark Rubin @PixelsofMark]

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

[Mark Rubin @PixelsofMark]

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

[Mark Rubin @PixelsofMark]

@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.

[Mark Rubin @PixelsofMark]

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!