Hey everyone, Bit here. The FPS to revitalize the FPS scene is no more.
XDefiant? What?
If you don’t know what XDefiant is, either you don’t like first-person shooters or the only FPS you care about is Call of Duty. XDefiant is basically the only game in recent times to try to come after Call of Duty’s position, offering the same 6v6 multiplayer that CoD has, while being designed to put the community first and be brutally honest. It’s published by Ubisoft and developed by their San Francisco team. The executive producer, Mark Rubin, was known for working on older Call of Duty games with Infinity Ward.
It’s community-first: Mark Rubin himself and the other developers have openly communicated with players. This is unheard of in AAA studios.
It’s brutally honest: No skill-based matchmaking (SBMM) and definitely no engagement-optimized matchmaking (EOMM). Being like this is meant to help players get better, instead of protecting them.
Activision is pushing predatory monetization and engagement optimization algorithms further, instead of trying to breed an experience that challenges new players and keeps veterans returning. Activision has taken the fun out of FPS with their protected brackets and lack of action against cheaters. XDefiant was the solution. But now it’s dead.
UPDATE: My petition is closed
Sign NyteFalll's petition instead.
Want to see what I originally wrote? It's preserved in the WordPress version of this post.
A video
If you wanted to see this video where I rambled for 15 minutes before deciding a blog post would be better, here it is.
In conclusion
It’s sad to see this one gem in the FPS space go. It was a good try. Mark Rubin, if you see this, I appreciate the effort. You could have turned the industry around. I hope more developers try to gun for Call of Duty’s position in the future.
Best regards, LittleBit
