Rainbow Six Siege Is Launching Subscriptions, And The Players Are Not Happy

Ubisoft has announced plans to launch a subscription for Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six Siege.

They made this announcement in their livestream for Operation New Blood. You can watch it in the timestamp here. But, if you prefer to keep reading, Ubisoft has also outlined how the subscription, which they have dubbed the Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six Siege Membership, will play out:

• Upon enrolling you get: Instant Battle Pass access, 10 Battle levels, and 1 Bravo pack
• Then get a new cosmetic drop containing 1 Legendary item and 1 Epic bundle on the 28th of each month (first drop begins June 28th)
• On your monthly renewal date, you’ll receive another 10 Battle levels and 1 Bravo pack.

The system is also not cross platform or cross progression, but that’s also how the base game works so there’s no surprise there. You will have to log on on the platform you currently have your account active on to claim these rewards, and you will need to regularly log on at least monthly.

As reported by PC Gamer, the announcement was not received well online or on the Manchester Major, the latest Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six Siege esports event. And you can’t blame the players for their negative reaction to the announcement.

Originally released all the way back in 2015, Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six Siege emerged as one of the few live service titles to compete successfully with Fortnite to carve out its own niche, particularly in esports. It turned out so successful that it’s outdone Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six Extraction, the latest game that was supposed to come after it.

So it’s not like Ubisoft has figured out everything gamers want in live service. Their dev team somehow had the good luck to amass that player base amidst strong competition, and it’s not a situation Ubisoft can easily replicate with sequels, though they do seem to have gotten the launch of XDefiant right with some learnings from this game.

That player base is about to hit a decade with this title, and the fans may not like it, but that’s the reason Ubisoft is making changes like this. There’s a set amount of money they are currently making from the player base, and the company is finding ways to profit from fan loyalty even more.

In spite of PC Gamer’s report, the player base hasn’t quite called for a boycott or refund campaign of some kind, and there’s a good reason for that. Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six Siege players already pay as much as $ 20 for a premium bundle for each season of the game, and Ubisoft has consistently put out four seasons each year for the past eight years.

Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six Siege players are already willing to pay on top of the game’s retail price, which many of them paid for all the way back in 2015. Because of the esports aspect, many of those players are also incentivized to keep paying, because they want the game and its community to stay healthy.

The devil really is in the details of how much the membership will cost, and Ubisoft hasn’t revealed that yet. If it turns out that players get more value, or even better, pay less overall than shelling out for each season, the players may end up embracing it after all. But we’ll just have to see how Ubisoft plays it.