XDefiant continues to bleed players as Black Ops 6 launch looms large

With Treyarch’s Black Ops 6 set to bust down the FPS genre’s doors soon, most of the community’s attention is slowly drifting toward the upcoming CoD entry. And with XDefiant continuing to bleed players steadily, Ubisoft’s shoot ’em up could have an even harder time living up to its “CoD beater” moniker once BO6 makes its way onto multiple gaming platforms in October.

Following a solid opening week in which it saw a peak of eight million unique players (per Insider Gaming), that number has steadily dwindled, with XDefiant on PS5 and Xbox Series falling from 7th to 10th on Circana’s US Player Engagement Tracker (via Mat Piscatella). Unfortunately, figures for its PC player base remain scarce since the game isn’t available on Steam and is exclusive to the Ubisoft Connect app.

Predictably enough, this significant drop has some XDefiant fans worried, with u/Dreamerlax even claiming that “BO6’s release will be the killing blow to the player population.” In addition, the myriad problems it’s faced throughout launch and beyond, like its ongoing hit reg issues, haven’t made things any better. Although the XDefiant dev team has been consistently transparent and communicative with the community, players can only take so much before looking for other alternatives.

u/TotalBrisqueT also pointed out that since Black Ops 6 will be available with Game Pass on day one, CoD would be taking a huge share of the free-to-play audience (although you do have to pay for a subscription to play it on the app). “The only reason I don’t dabble in CoD casually is because I can’t be arsed paying $60 every year,” they added.

Of course, it’s also worth remembering that every live service game goes through down periods a few weeks after launch, especially when its first season is yet to be released. But with the XDefiant Season 1 release date set to take place soon, the Ubisoft shooter could see an influx of players soon with all the new content that’s set to arrive alongside the update on July 2.