An era is over: XDefiant producer Mark Rubin leaves the gaming industry after Ubisoft shooter's servers shut down

The world of gaming is saying goodbye to one of its veterans, as Ubisoft XDefiant shooter's executive producer and 20-year industry veteran Mark Rubin has announced his retirement from the gaming industry with the official shutdown of the game's servers.

Here's What We Know

A large part of Rubin's post is dedicated to the closure of XDefiant servers, but he also noted that he is leaving the industry. "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," Rubin wrote.

In other parts of his post, Rubin also talked about the success that XDefiant initially had when the game was released last year, noting that the project managed to attract a lot of players despite very little marketing. According to him, XDefiant demonstrated the fastest player acquisition in the first weeks of any Ubisoft game.

"In fact, I would say that something miraculous happened with this game because even though we had very little marketing, we still achieved the fastest player acquisition in the first few weeks for an Ubisoft game simply because of all of you talking about the game and promoting it," Rubin wrote. "But unfortunately, due to little or no marketing, especially post-launch, we didn't attract any new players after the initial launch."

As for the reasons why XDefiant started losing players, leading to the eventual closure of its servers, Rubin noted that there were several different factors, including the growing technical debt for the developers that came from using an engine that was not really designed for fast-paced multiplayer shooters. The game's networking code also suffered for similar reasons, as the engine could not handle players with inconsistent connections well.

XDefiant was shut down after the completion of its latest season, which began in December. During the season, the game received three new factions and 13 new maps, but unfortunately, this was not enough to save the project.

Source: @PixelsofMark