It's not easy being an XDefiant player these days. After the launch of Season 1, several game-breaking bugs and issues are still going strong – with some worse than ever before. And now the game's player base is furious as a result.
The game's highly active subreddit is on fire with complaints and grievances concerning a slew of issues currently plaguing Ubisoft's free-to-play shooter: a consistently poor net code and subsequently broken hit registration; abilities being stuck on cooldown or permanently greyed out for the remainder of the round, rendering them unusable; no way to counter perhaps the most annoying gadget in the game – the Spiderbot, and consistent reports of game crashes and server issues (especially on console). Phew; I'm nearly out of breath after all that.
These issues have gotten more pronounced since the launch of the game's first battle pass season. But seeing as net code issues have been consistent since the game's launch at the end of May 2024, you can't exactly blame the Season 1 update for breaking things all of a sudden. Players, naturally, are up in arms, frustrated at the lack of a timeline for fixes for bugs and issues that Ubisoft has publicly acknowledged for quite some time now.
Particularly concerning is a relatively recent issue where players' special abilities are becoming unavailable for the rest of the round after they use them just a couple of times. These abilities, unique to the game's diverse characters and factions, are core to the XDefiant experience. Not having them working whatsoever is a game-breaking experience that needs to be addressed immediately.
While the above claims on the game's subreddit that the player base is dwindling are merely anecdotal, even some YouTubers are starting to smell the blood in the water now, proclaiming that "XDefiant Is Already Dead".
Nearly two months after the game's launch, it's concerning how prevalent comments about the net code being bad are, as well as how a highly anticipated Season 1 update can break something as fundamental as most characters' special abilities. With the release of Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 a little over three months away, there's not a huge amount of time left for Ubisoft to resolve these issues and win back the community.
Curious to know where killcams are in XDefiant? Then be sure to check out A highly-requested feature is coming to XDefiant soon, Executive Producer confirms on Pro Game Guides.
Ivan Krasnov has been a writer for over 7 years. His areas of interest include shooters like Call of Duty, Apex Legends, and The Finals, but also RPGs like Cyberpunk: 2077 and the Dishonored franchise and single-player experiences like God of War and The Last of Us. Ivan has a double major in History and Russian from Oberlin College and when he isn't gaming – he is playing music and touring Europe with his band.