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XDefiant is steadily climbing the charts as one of today’s most popular shooters, but its unavailability on Steam may be hurting its potential. Since XDefiant is a Ubisoft-developed title, it stands to reason that the company would only make it playable on their own PC gaming service, Ubisoft Connect. Unfortunately, its absence on Valve’s highly popular platform is prompting some players to refuse to play the game.
Despite its popularity and the myriad positive player reviews it’s received so far, some people apparently don’t want to spare the few minutes that it takes to download Ubisoft Connect. At least, that’s according to Reddit user BigBottomBoxLip9. According to their post, they “have two stubborn friends that refuse to play [XDefiant] because it’s only on the Ubisoft launcher.” Afterward, they surmised that their friends “probably aren’t the only ones either.”
As expected, many of the comments below the thread blasted players who refuse to play games merely because they aren’t available on Steam. Some also pointed out that having both platforms is already a necessity if you play some of Ubisoft’s other games, like Rainbow Six Siege.
This means XDefiant being ported to Steam, if Ubisoft ever does, would become impractical and redundant and would only serve to boost its visibility—something the game doesn’t seem to need after it reportedly surpassed one million unique users within two and a half hours of its launch, per Insider Gaming.
Of course, for all we know, Ubisoft may eventually be planning to place it on Valve’s storefront to bring more attention to it. But until that happens, those looking to try it out may as well download Ubisoft Connect now since you’ll need to install it either way.
Before you hop back in, check out our guides on the best XDefiant loadouts and class setups so you can frag out with ease. You can also take a look at our XDefiant best weapon tier list to give you an idea of the game’s current meta.
