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XDefiant brings with it five Factions for its pre-season with more to be added over the coming months. Four of the starting lineup are free to play, and the fifth, DeadSec from WatchDogs will either have to cough up to unlock it the hard way. But let’s take a dive into who they all are, where they came from, and what they will bring to the table.
XDefiant Factions
Libertad
Far Cry 6 fan? Then you will recognize these guys as the freedom fighters from the Carribean island of Yara.
Description: Libertad are expert medics, thanks to BioVida therapies they’ve adapted for battlefield use. Their Médico backpack can keep an entire team alive and fighting, and just their presence alone increases passive healing for nearby friendlies.
Ultra: Medico Supremi – Health boost
Passive: Espiritu de Libertad – heals nearby allies
Ability: A fortifying wave boosts total health and regen for you and nearby allies.
Phantoms
Now we are talking. Welcome Shadow Team from Ghost Recon. You will need some of these guys in your squad.
Description: These ex-Ghosts, also known as Shadow Team, offer their training and advanced tech to the highest bidder.
Phantoms are hard to kill and specialize in battlefield control, using a variety of deployed and personal shields to hold down points or anchor a forward rush.
Ultra: Aegis: A spherical plasma shield combined with an electro-scattergun for close-quarters combat.
Passive: Hardened: Health increased as a result of tailored gene therapies.
Ability: Blitz Shield: Equip a tactical shield. Press the Melee button for a shield bash.

Echelon
I’d recognize those Splinter Cell goggles anywhere. If stealth is your game, these guys don’t even appear on the minimap.
Description: The spies of the NSA’s Echelon initiative don’t shy away from a firefight, but information and subterfuge are their most potent weapons.
Echelon are invisible on the minimap and use their abilities to surprise and confuse their foes. In addition, Echelon agents can reveal the location of enemy combatants, giving their allies a huge tactical advantage.
Ultra: Sonar Goggles – Reveal enemies and hunt them down with the classic Third Echelon 5.7 pistol.
Passive: Low Profile – Agent does not appear on enemy minimaps.
Ability: Ghillie Suit – Renders the agent nearly invisible. Movement and aiming reduce the effect.
Cleaners
The Division is represented by the Cleaners from NYC and these guys are fire.
Description: Cleaners are damage-dealing specialists, packing incendiary rounds alongside hardware like a napalm-spreading drone and an old-fashioned flame thrower. This crew takes grim pride in their work—while the Cleaners may not be trained soldiers, they know how to finish a job.
Ultra: The Purifier – A flamethrower ensures enemies are thoroughly sterilized.
Passive: Incendiary Rounds – Incendiary ammo inflicts extra burn damage but decreases weapon range.
Ability: Firebomb – Detonate a Molotov cocktail, causing explosive damage and igniting the area.
DeadSec
WatchDog’s hackers arrive in XDefiant, but you will first have to unlock them or pay for them.
Description: Where DedSec goes, chaos follows. These tech experts can scramble the enemy’s HUD; take control of deployable items like shields, turrets, and drones; and unleash autonomous Spiderbots to hunt down the opposing team. DedSec hackers come from a variety of backgrounds, but they all believe in disrupting and dismantling systems of control, technological and otherwise.
Ultra: Lockout – Disable the enemies’ HUD, minimap, and abilities in the affected area.
Passive: Fabricator – After a device is deployed, the Fabricator prints a new one.
Ability: Hijack – Hack enemy-deployed abilities and make them your own.
And that is the five we start with. A decent spread from some great game franchises. Let’s see how they all work together over the next few weeks. If you want to read more about all the modes and maps in the game, then check out this page.
The post All factions in XDefiant – everything you need to know about their abilities and backgrounds appeared first on ReadWrite.

More than a dozen of the world’s top AI companies made new safety commitments at a global summit in Seoul on Tuesday (May 21), according to a statement from the U.K. government.
The agreement with 16 tech firms – including ChatGPT-maker OpenAI, Google DeepMind, and Anthropic – builds on the consensus reached at the first global AI safety summit at Bletchley Park in Britain last year.
The announcement came as South Korea and the U.K. hosted a global AI summit in Seoul during a time when the rapid pace of artificial intelligence innovation leaves governments scrambling to keep up. “These commitments ensure the world’s leading AI companies will provide transparency and accountability on their plans to develop safe AI,” U.K. Prime Minister Rishi Sunak said in a statement released by the country’s Department for Science, Innovation and Technology.

In an historic first, tech companies from across the globe have committed to developing AI safely.
From @OpenAI to @Meta, 16 companies have signed up to the fresh ‘Frontier AI Safety Commitments’ https://t.co/KqcBbvKLSu#AISeoulSummit pic.twitter.com/cqmwryq494
— Department for Science, Innovation and Technology (@SciTechgovuk) May 21, 2024

Under the agreement, AI firms that have not already shared how they assess the risks of their technology will publish those frameworks, according to the statement. These will include what risks are “deemed intolerable” and what the firms will do to ensure that these thresholds are not crossed.
“Ensuring AI safety is crucial for sustaining recent remarkable advancements in AI technology, including generative AI, and for maximizing AI opportunities and benefits, but this cannot be achieved by the efforts of a single country or company alone,” added South Korea’s Interior and Safety Minister Lee Sang-min.
Which companies have agreed to AI safety commitments?
Apart from ChatGPT-maker OpenAI, Google DeepMind, and Anthropic, the firms that have agreed to the safety rules include Microsoft, Amazon, IBM, Meta, France’s Mistral AI, and China’s Zhipu.ai. In addition, South Korea’s Naver and Samsung Electronics, the UAE’s G42 and Technology Innovation Institute, Canadian company Cohere, Inflection AI, and Elon Musk’s xAI are also involved.
The companies have pledged that, under severe conditions, they will “not develop or deploy a model or system at all” if they cannot sufficiently mitigate risks to meet certain thresholds, according to the statement. These thresholds will be determined before the upcoming AI summit scheduled to be held in France in 2025.
The Seoul summit is taking place shortly after OpenAI announced the dissolution of a team focused on addressing the long-term risks of advanced AI.
“The field of AI safety is quickly evolving and we are particularly glad to endorse the commitments’ emphasis on refining approaches alongside the science,” said Anna Makanju, OpenAI’s Vice President of Global Affairs, in the same statement.
Seán Ó hÉigeartaigh, University of Cambridge Director of AI Futures and Responsibility, wrote on X, “Great to see a wider range of companies commit to responsible scaling policies.”

Great to see a wider range of companies commit to responsible scaling policies – good job summit team. Great comments from Ben Garfinkel, Yi Zeng, and Beth Barnes too.https://t.co/yhydDgN2XV
— Seán Ó hÉigeartaigh (@S_OhEigeartaigh) May 21, 2024

The two-day summit will take place partially virtually, featuring a combination of private sessions and others that are open to the public in Seoul.
Later on Tuesday (May 21), South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol and the UK’s Sunak will then co-chair a virtual meeting of world leaders.
Featured image: Canva
The post Top AI firms worldwide pledge safety measures at Seoul summit appeared first on ReadWrite.

We have a roadmap for XDefiant for the next year and we already know a little bit about what is to come in Season 1 in about six weeks time, but what have we been given to play with as the game launches in its pre-season mode?
You can read about what we know looking forward on our other page, and if you are starting and hellbent on unlocking the DeadSec faction, we have help for you for that too, but what actually do we get to choose from, right here, right now in pre-season? Let’s find out.
All XDefiant Game Modes
We are getting five different modes in XDefiant and Call of Duty fans will know what to expect with some of them at least. This is one of the reasons we think XDefiant will be big, as it will be instantly familiar to a lot of players. Let’s check these modes out.
Domination
Sound familiar? It should. It is one of Call of Duty’s most popular game modes. Three points are highlighted on the map and you and your team need to control them, scoring points for the longer you keep them under control. It’s mad, frantic and annoying.
Hot Shot
If you like Kill Confirmed in CoD you will feel right at home here. Every time a player is killed they drop an item that you need to snap up to score the points. In CoD it’s a dog tag. If a member of the opposing team gets the pick up you miss out on the point. Here. the one who gets the most pickups gets branded Hot Shot and will get some stat boosts.
Escort
In this mode, you need to escort the robot from one side of the map to the other. If you have played Overwatch you will recognise the mechanic and be familiar with how it all works.
Occupy
Another mode that will be familiar if you have played any recent Call of Duty. Occupy is basically Hardpoint. Similar in some ways to Domination. We aren’t breaking the boundaries of anything novel here, Occupy will move a location around the map and you need to fight for control of it.
Zone Control
Here you need to occupy all of the zones with your team as you come under attack. Once control of all the zones is under one team another area will open up to fight over.
All XDefiant Game Maps

We are getting 14 maps to start with, some have been designed specifically for this new game, and others tip the hat to previous Ubisoft games. The game was previously known as Tom Clancy’s XDefiant and feature similar maps to other TC games.
The maps here are split into two different categories, Arena and Progression. Arena maps are your standard 6v6 small maps, tight places, and lots of kill points that any Call of Duty player is used to.
Arena maps spread things out a little and provide checkpoints and the like. They aren’t as big as the likes of Invasion but do have a little more room to breathe.
Arena Maps

Arena
Attica Heights (Ghost Recon Phantoms)
Dumbo (The Division)
Echelon HQ (Splinter Cell)
Emporium (The Division)
Liberty (The Division 2)
Mayday
Nudleplex (Watch Dogs 2)
Pueblito (Far Cry 6)
Showtime

Progression Maps

Meltdown
Midway
Times Square (The Division)
Zoo (The Division)

The post XDefiant – All game modes and maps in pre-season appeared first on ReadWrite.