Rainbow Six Siege is over six years old and still rolls out regular updates. Not just that, but major updates with new seasons and operators are consistently on the cycle. Some even consider the game as the prototype for the ‘games as a service’ concept. Siege is also on the list of games most likely to go free-to-play, but Ubisoft has constantly said that there are no plans to do so.
PCGamesN caught up with associate game director Aurélien Chiron about the game’s current state and asked about any free-to-play plans. “We are continuing to look at ways to engage new players and retain our loyal community,” said Chiron, “however there is currently no plan to make Rainbow Six Siege a free-to-play game.”
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It seems that Ubisoft still doesn’t think that making Siege free-to-play is a good idea. However, the game constantly conducts free weekend deals to try and lure new players. Since it has been running for a while now, and has added loads of new operators and updates, it’s understandable why a potentially new player could find it intimidating. However, Ubisoft’s constant push of the game suggests that it's not only looking to keep the current fan base happy, but make Rainbow Six Siege inviting to newcomers as well.
In January last year, game director Leroy Athanassoff spoke about the interest in going free-to-play, but admitted that it was much harder than most people realise. The main issue the team is worried about is that if the game goes free-to-play without the necessary balancing changes, newcomers may get dominated by experienced players and drop off; this would defeat the entire purpose of going free-to-play in the first place.
In other Ubisoft news, Rainbow Six Extraction and Riders Republic have both been delayed. The former will now launch in January 2022 and the latter on October 28, 2021. Separate updates were given for both games by Ubisoft; while the update for Extraction was a generic announcement of the delay, Riders Republic was delayed so that the devs could “fine tune the experience and give you another chance to jump in before launch and provide feedback.”
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