Battle royales are everywhere. With XDefiant’s release finally upon us, we’re here to see if Ubisoft went all-out by including a fully-fledged battle royale mode for maximum chaos.
Bullets will fly and people will die in XDefiant. Ubisoft’s long-awaited “CoD-killer” has been through years of testing and player feedback, and now, the free-to-play shooter is looking to make a tactical insertion into the competitive first-person shooter market.
Among the many game modes we’ve seen throughout XDefiant’s beta tests, a battle royale mode continues to be the talk of the town. Let’s address this requested feature right now.
Will XDefiant have battle royale?
No, XDefiant will no feature a battle royale mode at launch, and from the sounds of it, a battle royale isn’t part of Ubisoft’s plan.
Executive producer of XDefiant, Mark Rubin, posted a social media message on X (formerly Twitter) saying: “We are solely focused on making a great and fun arena shooter. No BR. And we’re not moving on to a new game after this.”
We know XDefiant is likely to launch with the most of the game modes we’ve seen already (if not all of them), with plenty more to come in the pipeline. But there’s no BR being cooked up, and to be honest, this probably works in XDefiant‘s favor. After all, many players in the COD community believe Warzone negatively impacted the core Call of Duty multiplayer experience.
If XDefiant can fixate on its first-person shooter, listen to what the community has to say, and keep making improvements people ask for, a battle royale mode isn’t needed. Besides, the battle royale market is completely oversaturated as it is: Fortnite, Apex Legends, Warzone, and PUBG are all heavy hitters in the genre.
Plus, you might remember that Ubisoft’s track record with battle royales isn’t great. Its FPS battle royale effort Hyper Scape bombed and was shut down after only 18 months. So, here’s to XDefiant—hopefully it makes an impact on the FPS genre.
If you want to read more about XDefiant, check out our guides explaining the differences between Casual and Ranked, as well as all the playable Factions.
