Everyone In Defiance Reboot Starts Fresh, According To New Q&A By New Devs

The revival of Defiance, the online shooter launched simultaneously alongside the SyFy channel show and shut down in 2021, has caused quite the stir, and with it quite a few questions. Fortunately, the developers at Fawkes Games, the new studio handling the re-launch of Defiance, published a Q&A with plenty of answers to pressing questions, and there’s good news and bad news.  

The bad news first: since the Defiance shutdown was a complete end to the game, all the data affiliated with its older version has been lost. This means that since all players’ data was wiped, everyone will have to start fresh. Also, to boot, support is limited: there’ll only be an independent PC launcher, with only keyboard support. However, the team is at least looking to move things onto Steam in the future, as Defiance did have a Steam page. 

There’s better news, though, in that Defiance will be a free-to-play title once again, with some microtransations of an unannounced nature. 

“In general, our goal in terms of monetization, is to keep it aligned with our efforts,” the Q&A reads. “We are an indie studio, with a solid foundation for operating games cost effectively. We also don’t have major corporate financial boundaries to meet.” We’re not exactly sure what that means at the moment, but good for them. 

Defiance will launch in the former version's “final version,” but while they say they’ll focus on “using all the old content and work by the previous developers,” it’ll remove some “fiction points” as well as “controversial weapons” that were available through DLCs. With full access and ability to modify the game, Fawkes claims it’ll focus development of current and possible future content based on community feedback, and any further original content will depend on such as well. 

There are some more nuances they get into on the official Q&A, but overall it seems to be an enthusiastic attempt at relaunching what ended up as a niche title. Given the modern roster of post-apocalyptic multiplayer shooters such as The Division and Once Human, it might see a welcome return.