Ubisoft’s free-to-play arena shooter XDefiant’s first patch has been released.
Entitled “Preseason Patch 1”, it addresses a number of specific issues, including one with loading into the Practice Zone – some players found themselves “in a hellscape” outside the world – and another that sees devices dropped at players’ feet should they die during device deployment. Up until now, they would still be thrown as if you hadn’t just carked it.
This means Practice Zone has been turned back on, although the team warns “it’s possible weird things could still happen”. So make of that what you will.
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Also, that issue “where you’d get hitmarkers on an enemy as they killed you, but their health bar still appeared full to you?” Turns out the health bar display was wrong and you did indeed damage them. That “should be fixed now”, along with one bug that displayed end-of-match text with the wrong orientation in Arabic and another that was causing low framerates for some AMD GPU users.
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This should be great news for the millions of players who jumped onto XDefiant as soon as it launched. According to Insider Gaming’s Tom Henderson, the shooter hit one million unique players within just two and a half hours of going live, which is quite a feat given the now seemingly prerequisite release day matchmaking issues.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, then, cheaters have already found their way into XDefiants ranks, and right now there’s not much players can do about it. XDefiant uses BattleEye, the same anti-cheat system engaged in Rainbow Six Siege and… well, anyone who’s spent any time at all with Siege will know that cheaters are rife.
“Seen a post on Twitter about the Anti-Cheat. Only knew it was a matter of time before the cheating community managed to find a bypass,” said one unhappy player. “Things will only get worse from here, and it’s only pre-season. Net code and Anti-cheat should’ve been the things to prioritise from the start. Gameplay and everything else could’ve been handled over time.”
“I’d say I’m encountering one cheater every 2-3 games, which is kinda annoying af,” added another. “Best way to get rid of them is to make them play exclusively against each other. That’d be fun.”
Ubisoft’s Tom Clancy-adjacent free-to-play shooter XDefiant finally launched for PS5, Xbox Series X/S, and PC on 21st May, after a couple of delays. It was initially revealed as Tom Clancy’s XDefiant back in 2021, but Ubisoft later announced it was dropping the prefix following criticism from Tom Clancy fans who felt XDefiant’s flamboyant action strayed too far from the franchise’s more serious military themes.