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[Draugoth]

The Boys Club

XDefiant’s shortcomings stem from several executives and directors on the project. They are internally referred to as ‘The Boys Club’ by a large majority of the team.
At first, ‘The Boys Club’ was the name given to a select few individuals who caused constant problems for the game’s development, and the term was collectively agreed upon by some members of the team to feel a sense of comradery. But a couple of years later, that group grew to a dozen or so both male and female individuals, and its term has evolved into something much more bitter in the studio. The group has been the cause of missed deadlines, crunch, a toxic work environment, and multiple people leaving the project, said sources.

Netcode

As of late 2023, the XDefiant team has been facing a huge hurdle with the game’s netcode. As Mark Rubin had already outlined, the game had significant issues and needed fixing. Ironically, though, this has been a known issue for years, said people working on the project, and could have been avoided if leadership had listened to the rest of the team. But as the suggestions didn’t come from within their bubble—or should we say, the club—the advice was always ignored.
“There have been countless occasions where different teams would advise The Boys Club (for good reason) about making certain choices and decisions with months/years notice in order to avoid issues down the road”, said one developer when asked about the games netcode issues.

Chasing Call of Duty

In our previous report, we reported that XDefiant’s delays have stemmed from the never-ending pursuit of chasing Call of Duty, which has resulted in developers becoming increasingly frustrated with the project’s lack of progress. This isn’t an issue that caused the recent delay, but an issue that has plagued the game for years and a subject that ‘The Boys Club’ finds sensitive when brought up internally – and after our past report – seemingly publically too.
While there’s no question that a new first-person shooter should take inspiration from other popular titles on the market, sources who spoke to Insider Gaming said that it became evident really quickly that Call of Duty was the only title that leadership was interested in. Sources said that almost every very creative decision for the best part of two years quickly ended with the same rhetorical question – What would Call of Duty do?
Speaking on ‘The Boys Club’ and its pursuit of CoD, one source said: “They will nitpick the feature to their liking [similar to COD] and tell the design/production teams to come back later once they make the appropriate changes. Even once the team makes those changes, The Boys Club will come up with something else and the process will repeat again for months. All resulting in either the feature finally being implemented into the game or being cut entirely.”
Another source said, “the constant changing of approved features, or adding new features that don’t really affect the game has pushed us back significantly, probably a year or so at this point”.

Where’s XDefiant Now?

As outlined in our previous report, XDefiant is not currently canceled. Following the insanely popular open test, Ubisoft has some expectations that the game could be the free-to-play hit that they’ve been loathing for a number of years. That’s why the internal goal right now is to get the game out the door, but it’s unclear how long it will take to fix the game’s current issues—we’ll have to wait on Mark Rubin’s update for that one.
Internally, some developers believe that seasonal content targets will almost certainly be missed due to ongoing issues, lack of resources (unless the game is a stellar hit), and just staff wanting the “XD Sega” to be over so they can move on to other projects.
At the time of writing, there’s no release date set for XDefiant, and Insider Gaming understands that the past-generation console versions for the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One have been canceled.

via Insider Gaming

 

[touchfuzzy]

Sounds like they had a fun game somewhere in there that's been butchered and ruined by incompetent management. Lost of Western AAA development in a nutshell.

 

[Embearded]

This industry is full of men-children.
Imagine saying out loud its a good idea to call the group of people meeting at the water cooler, "the boys club".