XDefiant dev provides major release update & explains delay

Mark Rubin, XDefiant’s Executive Producer, has released a new update addressing the community explaining the reason behind the game’s delay and providing a comprehensive release update.

Since its announcement, XDefiant has emerged as one of the most highly anticipated FPS titles slated for a 2023 release, generating significant excitement among gamers. While the development team initially announced a summer 2023 release for the game, there’s still no official release date for XDefiant.

While the PEGI rating approval initially generated excitement among players, the Ubisoft team recently provided an update regarding the game’s delay and the current status of the development process.

XDefiant release date & development status update

In a September 11 release update shared on Ubisoft’s official site, Mark Rubin addressed the community’s concerns about the game’s delay, sharing that the game will be released “as soon as they can,” which could be from late September to early-mid October.

During the lengthy update, he shared the team started the submission process “at the end of July.” This phase is where dev teams provide the game to first-party entities such as PlayStation, Xbox, and other platforms for testing to ensure it performs seamlessly within their respective environments.

Once they got the first results back by mid-August, it was a “Not Pass,” meaning they still had more work to comply. Rubin noted that if the game had successfully passed, it would’ve been released “at the end of August.”

However, this inevitably led the team to “spend the last 3-4 weeks fixing those issues” to make another submission. If the current submission passes, then the game could be released during the mid-to-end of September. Although in the event that it receives a “conditional Pass,” the game would need a Day 1 patch that “pushes the date out to early/mid-October.”

Additionally, Rubin also announced that “since the concept of this game is to be more transparent with our community and to listen to our players and act on their feedback,” the dev team is already working on the map voting feature and a Search & Destroy-like mode which will arrive later in the game.

All in all, that’s everything you need to know about XDefiant’s launch update, including the expected release date.

For more on XDefiant, be sure to check out the game’s matchmaking explanation and all the confirmed Factions and abilities.