It can't be easy to spend years working on a game, get pumped to finally announce it, and be met with the resounding "lmao" from every corner of the internet, but such was the case of XDefiant, Ubisoft's take on Call of Duty's 6v6 arena multiplayer, when it was unveiled two years ago.
"It's fast-paced firefights meet punk rock mosh pits," proclaimed Ubisoft in its first trailer drenched in cel-shaded models and colorful graffiti. It was an awkward and incongruent tone for what was supposed to be the next Tom Clancy game, a label usually reserved for modern spec-ops action games. Roping in Clancy classics like Ghost Recon and Splinter Cell for a caffeine-laced free-to-play CoD clone didn't go down well—with longtime fans calling blasphemy and everyone else thinking Ubisoft was trying way too hard to duplicate its only live service success, Rainbow Six Siege.
