Mark Rubin

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

[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!

[Mark Rubin @PixelsofMark]

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

[Mark Rubin @PixelsofMark]

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

[Mark Rubin @PixelsofMark]

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!

[Mark Rubin @PixelsofMark]

@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.

[Mark Rubin @PixelsofMark]

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

[Mark Rubin @PixelsofMark]

@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.

[Mark Rubin @PixelsofMark]

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

[Mark Rubin @PixelsofMark]

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.

[Mark Rubin @PixelsofMark]

@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. 🤣