After a leaker puts XDefiant delay down to chasing COD, the game's producer can't resist responding with a 'major eye roll'

Ubisoft's upcoming shooter XDefiant was at one stage scheduled to be released in summer 2023. The date was pushed back to October, before a public test saw yet another delay to an unspecified future launch date. The game did remain in Ubisoft's Q3 2024 earnings report, however, indicating the publisher expected it to release before March 31, 2024.

Well, with a week to go, that's not looking likely, and a report from Insider Gaming claims to have the goods on why. It alleges the game has missed «dozens» of internal milestones and quotes an internal source as saying «the neverending hunt to chase COD and add pointless stuff always breaks the current build.»

This may well raise eyebrows given that, delays aside, reception to XDefiant's test periods has generally been positive, and has focused on it being more in-line with the older style of Call of Duty games. The idea the game is being delayed to «chase COD» certainly caught the eye of Mark Rubin, the executive producer of XDefiant and someone who certainly knows his way around a COD: he previously held the same role at Infinity Ward.

«Just FYI, nothing about our delay is due to any new features,» said Rubin, addressing one of the report's core claims. «In fact not much has changed from a gameplay standpoint. The delay has been due to the tech issues we've talked about.»

And as for «whoever said chasing COD» in the original report, Rubin says that was a «major eyeroll», adding a grinning face emoji.

Rubin goes on to talk about the reasons behind the delay in some detail, though doesn't address the question of when exactly players can expect to see the game. «Part of it was scale,» said Rubin. «Under small tests, some stuff worked fine but when you scale up there were compounding issues causing major issues in those systems. Also, some of the netcode issues were due to increased anti-cheat which sadly is always something that hurts performance.»

Rubin also addressed the idea of chasing COD directly. «We've said in the