Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six Siege

• 1. Introduction

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  Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six Siege is a Ubisoft shooter with no story campaign, and it still passed 70 million registered players by December 2020. Ubisoft Montreal built it around a single idea: two teams fighting over one building at a time. Its predecessor had promised cinematic storytelling. This game offered almost none. It reached PlayStation 4, Windows and Xbox One in December 2015, and its first weeks were quiet. So why would a studio strip out the campaign of a flagship series? What did employee tournaments reveal about the rules a shooter should have? And how does a game that sold modestly at launch end up as one of the long-running hits of its generation?

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• 2. Rebuilding From Patriots

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  In 2011 Ubisoft announced Tom Clancy's Rainbow 6: Patriots, a tactical shooter packed with cut-scenes and scripted events. Soon afterward it stalled. Its engine was outdated, its leadership kept changing, and its quality fell short. It was also planned for seventh-generation consoles that could not run certain mechanics. With a new console generation arriving, Ubisoft cancelled Patriots and assembled a fresh team of 25 people to work out how to reboot the series.

  That small team asked what Rainbow Six was really about. Their answer was joining a counter-terrorist unit that travels the world, usually in tense clashes between attackers and defenders. They wanted this in a multiplayer form that people would replay for years. So they put every resource into multiplayer and abandoned the single-player campaign.

  Development officially began in January 2013 at Ubisoft Montreal. Ubisoft offices in Barcelona, Toronto, Kyiv, Shanghai and Chengdu helped out. The working title was Rainbow Six Unbreakable, a name that nodded to the destruction system and to a team determined to rescue a project that had been stuck. Brand director Alexandre Remy said the team felt confident in the new vision but very nervous at the reveal. They knew the change of direction would probably disappoint some fans.

  The team eventually grew to 150 people, mostly first-person shooter veterans or longtime Rainbow Six players. Even so, they studied real operations: the 1980 London Iranian Embassy siege, the 1977 Lufthansa Flight 181 hijacking, and the 2002 Moscow theatre hostage crisis. Their aim was a portrayal that was accurate and appropriate. They also consulted France's National Gendarmerie Intervention Group, known as GIGN, about how its members would respond to a hostage rescue.

  Creative director Xavier Marquis argued that a hostage gives players an objective and a priority. They must avoid hurting the person they are rescuing, which pushes them to plan before they attack. To make the hostage feel real, the team built a mechanic called "living hostage". The character coughs when dust fills the air and shields themselves when gunfire is nearby.

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• 3. Inside a Round

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  A 45-second countdown opens every online round, and attackers spend it steering mecanum-wheeled drones through the map. The drones hunt for enemy operators, traps, defensive setups and the objective itself. Defenders, meanwhile, build their positions and try to destroy those drones so that nothing is discovered. Once the countdown ends, the real assault begins. Casual matches last 3 minutes and 30 seconds, and ranked matches last three minutes.

  The base game offered five counter-terrorism units: the American Hostage Rescue Team, shown in-game as the FBI SWAT, plus the British SAS, Germany's GSG-9, Russia's Spetsnaz and France's GIGN. Each unit contributes four operators, split between attacking and defending. Every operator carries different weapons and gadgets, so the two sides are deliberately lopsided. A "Recruit" operator offers more flexible equipment but no unique gadget. Players pick before the round and cannot change afterward.

  A player who dies sits out until the round ends, but can enter "Support Mode". That gives access to drone cameras and security cameras, so the dead can still call out enemy positions. The game also has a spectator mode that shows a match from several angles.

  Progress is tracked with an in-game currency called Renown, earned at the end of matches, with ranked play paying the most. A second currency, R6 credits, is bought with real money and speeds up unlocking operators or cosmetics.

  At launch there were 11 maps and five modes. Post-launch content added four more maps in the first year and three in the second, and the game now has 26 maps. In Hostage, attackers extract a captive while defenders stop them. If either side accidentally downs the hostage and the other prevents a revival, the hostage bleeds out and the other team wins. In Bomb, attackers must find and defuse one of two bombs. In Secure Area, defenders guard a room holding a biohazard container.

  Tactical Realism arrived with Operation Skull Rain and stripped away most of the heads-up display, along with the ability to mark opponents. It also added a realistic ammunition system. The mode has since been removed, though some of its aspects survive elsewhere. Training Grounds lets up to five players fight artificial-intelligence enemies, and Situations offers 10 solo missions and one co-op mission as tutorials.

  Operation Chimera brought Outbreak, a limited-time event for three players. The team faces mutated humans infected by an alien parasite, and the harder of its two difficulties turns on friendly fire.

  The fiction behind all this begins with a Rainbow Program that has been shut down for three years. When terrorist attacks surge, a new leader named Aurelia Arnot, played by Angela Bassett, reactivates it under the codename "Six". Her recruits first face the White Masks, who launch a chemical attack on Bartlett University. Years later the plot turns toward a rogue operative called Deimos, whose real identity is Gerald Morris, a man declared killed in action in 2012.

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• 4. Breaking Walls

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  Players can open a hole in a wall simply by firing a shotgun at it. They can also plant explosives on a structure, or use breach charges to destroy a ceiling or floor. That freedom rests on RealBlast Destruction, an engine built in-house that, in the studio's words, "procedurally breaks everything down". The in-house team finished it just as development began, and the designers felt it suited the game. It grew steadily more important, and the team spent a long stretch making the destruction feel authentic.

  To make it believable, they built a materials-based tearing system, so different materials react differently to attack. Textures for damaged and destroyed surfaces came from a material bank and a tool called Substance Painter. Physically based rendering was used for the surfaces, even though engine problems made it ineffective early in production. The team chose subtle visual cues to show whether a surface can be destroyed, instead of more obvious hints that might distract players.

  Destruction also forced Ubisoft to rethink level design. Every map had to stay logical and realistic even after parts of it were gone.

  Defenders can answer with their own tools. They have a limited number of heavy-duty wall fortifications and deployable shields. Attackers can undo these with breaching devices, explosives or certain operator gadgets. Barbed wire and explosive entry-denial devices slow any advance. Bullets lose damage as they pass through structures, which makes walls both cover and gamble. Grenades and breach charges are scarce, and each round allows only a limited number.

  Vertical space matters too. An attacker can drop in by rappelling past a window, while a defender hears footsteps through a ceiling that is about to give way. The same dust and noise that the hostage coughs at in a rescue now reveals where the fight is heading next.

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• 5. Design Choices

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  Ubisoft summed up its goals as "teamwork, tactics, and tension". The first test of that came from a feature the team actually built, a respawn system. After several internal tournaments, they noticed the same employees always won. Respawning favoured strong players and rewarded individual skill over cooperation. Designer Chris Lee said the team first worried that removing it would appeal only to hardcore players. Testing showed the opposite. Strong players faced new challenges and had to rely on teammates, while weaker players who planned carefully were rewarded.

  Control followed what the team called the "Golden 3C Rules": Character, Control and Camera. Players always command their own movement, and the team avoided animations that interrupt them. Planting explosives or placing a breach charge can be cancelled instantly so the player can shoot. The camera moves only when the player moves, because sudden shifts might cause deaths. A free-lean system gives more control over line of sight.

  Several ideas were cut. Computer-controlled squadmates, a feature of earlier games, were removed from the solo missions because the team wanted players to rely on real people. A map editor was considered and never arrived. Hit markers disappeared because the team feared players would be "peppering the walls with gunfire" to locate enemies. And players cannot jump, because real counter-terrorist operators do not jump during their missions.

  Audio director Louis Philippe explained another reversal. The team first used intense music and sound to build tension, then realised that unexpected sounds from other players did it better. That led to Navigation Sounds, where noise depends on an operator's weight, armour and speed. Fortifying and breach-charging are louder still and can give a player away.

  The music was composed by Paul Haslinger, who had scored earlier Rainbow Six games and the Far Cry series. His co-composer Ben Frost made his video game soundtrack debut on Siege, with help from Leon Purviance.

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• 6. Slow Start, Long Support

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  Ubisoft unveiled the game at its Electronic Entertainment Expo 2014 press conference. In August 2015 it pushed the release from the 10th of October to the 1st of December 2015, to balance the game for cooperative play. A closed alpha ran from the 7th to the 13th of April 2015, and a closed beta began on the 24th of September. The open beta slipped from the 25th to the 26th of November because of matchmaking issues.

  In May 2015 Ubisoft chief executive Yves Guillemot predicted the game would outsell Far Cry 4's seven million sales over its lifetime, thanks to post-launch support. Launch week told a different story. The game debuted at number six in the UK software charts with 76,000 retail copies across three platforms, a result critics called underwhelming.

  Critics were also split. Chris Carter of Destructoid and Scott Butterworth of GameSpot praised its open-ended unpredictability. James Davenport of PC Gamer called it a "psychological race", and Ryan McCaffery of IGN found it "tense and riveting". Complaints centred on slow progression, hit detection, limited customization and thin content. Eurogamer's Martin Robinson called the overall package a contender for the year's best multiplayer game, yet questioned selling it at full price with so little in it. Many were disappointed by the missing campaign, and most thought Situations served only as a competent tutorial.

  Ubisoft answered with a games-as-a-service approach. Its management team initially doubted the idea and then approved it. The company fixed bugs and improved matchmaking, launched the BattlEye anti-cheat system in August 2016, and introduced the R6Fix programme in 2018, which rewards players who submit bug reports. An auto-kick system removed players who killed teammates, and from mid 2018 racist and homophobic slurs brought bans. All downloadable maps were free, and operators could be unlocked with Renown instead of cash. Ubisoft said it would add characters for 10 more years, so no sequel was planned.

  The audience responded. After the summer 2016 release of the third content update, Skull Rain, the player base rose 40% and passed 10 million registered players. In August 2017 the game passed 20 million players, with 2.3 million playing every day. It reached 25 million two years after launch and more than 45 million by February 2019.

  Not every decision landed well. In January 2018 Ubisoft introduced loot boxes called Outbreak Packs and replaced the base game with an Advanced Edition. Existing players had to pay for content that new players received. After a backlash, Ubisoft gave players a free premium skin and promised faster operator unlocks.

  By 2018 IGN and Eurogamer had re-reviewed the game and agreed that it had improved significantly. GameSpot called it "one of modern AAA gaming's biggest comebacks". Haydn Taylor of Gameindustry.biz contrasted its restrained monetization with Star Wars Battlefront II, and Ubisoft later applied the same free-update structure to For Honor.

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• 7. Built for Spectators

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  In late 2013 Ubisoft held its first meeting with David Hiltscher, vice president of ESL, a full two years before release. ESL gave feedback on balance and helped confirm the game could support competitive play. The design team took inspiration from multiplayer online battle arena games such as Dota 2, which often have 80 to 100 playable characters. That is why new operators kept arriving, giving viewers variety.

  The Rainbow Six Pro League for Windows and Xbox One was announced, and a event was held at the Intel Extreme Masters tournament on the 4th of March 2016. PENTA Sports, a European team, won the first season by beating GiFu in the final in May 2016. Pro League Year Two dropped Xbox One from its tournaments. Ubisoft also staged the Six Invitational in 2017 and 2018, and the 2018 event drew 321,000 viewers on Twitch.

  Nathan Lawrence of Red Bull and Richie Shoemaker of Eurogamer both compared the game favourably with Counter-Strike: Global Offensive. Both hoped it might one day dethrone that title as the leading competitive esports shooter. In Rio de Janeiro, the Pro League Season 8 Finals were where Year 3 Season 4, set in Morocco, was announced on the 18th of November.

  The Six Invitational in February 2020 carried the biggest prize pool in the series. A total of $3,000,000 was split among 16 teams, and the North American winners, Spacestation Gaming, took $1,000,000. That event also announced the end of Pro League and a new points-based system, a shift compared with the structures of Dota 2 and League of Legends.

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• 8. Controversies

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  On the 2nd of November 2018 Ubisoft Montreal announced "aesthetic changes" that would remove references to death, sex and gambling, in order to meet regulations in Asian countries. Many fans believed the changes were aimed at a release in China and likened them to censorship. On the 21st of November the studio reversed course, writing that it wanted the experience to stay "as true to the original artistic intent as possible".

  In May 2020 Ubisoft sued the Chinese developer Ejoy, along with Apple and Google, over Ejoy's mobile game Area F2. Ubisoft claimed that "Virtually every aspect of Area F2 is copied from Siege, from the operator selection screen to the final scoring screen and everything in between". It said it had asked both stores to remove the game and been refused. Because Area F2 was free-to-play with microtransactions, Ubisoft argued that the two companies were profiting from the copying.

  During the Six Invitational 2022, Ubisoft said an upcoming major would be held in the United Arab Emirates. Criticism followed over the country's treatment of LGBTQ+ people and over the safety of Ubisoft's LGBTQ+ staff and players. Days later the company moved the Six Major of August 2022 to another esports region.

  At the Six Invitational 2025, Ubisoft revealed a new operator called Rauora, from Christchurch, New Zealand. Fans noticed that his March 15 birthday and hometown pointed to the Christchurch mosque shootings, in which 51 people were killed. Ubisoft retracted the detail, apologised for the "oversight", and said the change would arrive in an update on the 4th of March. The operator's birthday was then changed to May 11.

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