The fact that games-as-a-service titles don’t end up with such a good reputation among gamers is mainly due to shitstorms, which we think are often caused by the greed of the publishers. For example, full-price titles like Middle-earth: Shadow of War or Star Wars: Battlefront 2 were released, which asked for a lot of money just for the normal gameplay and did not shy away from including almost infinitely long grinding phases, so that the customers felt compelled to spend more money. The still popular lootboxes in many titles seem just as strange, since they rely on gambling mechanics and probably don’t sell so well only because their contents are actually essential for the player. Overall, many gamers have rightly gotten the feeling in recent years that some publishers simply don’t want to be satisfied with normal sales, but almost like bagmen want to dig deeper into our pockets through nasty tricks.

Rainbow Six Siege Reportage: Good things come to those who wait

Once a reputation is ruined, it also takes years for a brand to recover from it – if that happens at all. It is true that there are now insurance policies for large companies that suffer major sales losses due to reputational damage. For example, teams of experts are then supposed to take over crisis communications so that the effects of a shitstorm do not cause lasting damage to the company. But there is another way, and that’s exactly what our report is about. With Rainbow Six: Siege (buy now 7,99 € /17,99 € ) Ubisoft has demonstrated how you can turn a niche game into a worldwide phenomenon, while at the same time owning an extremely lucrative games-as-a-service title and successfully navigating past the worst of the shitstorms. We visited the makers in Montreal and talked to Brand Director Alex Remy about the past and the future of Siege. We also had the honor of visiting the Six Invitational, where we were able to talk to e-sportsmen and fans about what makes the online shooter so special for them. You can find the interview with Alex Remy on the third page of the article.

Rainbow Six: Siege can be compared to few other online shooters. Rash actions like here from our enemy are punished immediately.

Currently, Rainbow Six: Siege is entering its fourth year and players are still receiving new content for free for the still incredibly nerve-wracking police vs. terrorists battles. We ourselves didn’t necessarily expect this, even though Ubisoft lured us in from the start with the information that fresh multiplayer maps are always released at no extra cost. Our reservations, however, had much more to do with the fact that we didn’t really believe in the success of such a special online shooter, which, with its complex and at the same time tough game mechanics, was primarily aimed at absolute genre veterans. In times when Battle Royale battles only took place in mods and the entertaining Call of Dutys celebrated huge successes year after year, a tactical shooter with asymmetrical game mechanics, a lot of team play and no respawns seemed relatively special to us. If Rainbow Six: Siege had lost players over time, Ubisoft as a stock company would hardly have been interested in continuing to employ a whole squad of employees with a failed project, and they would certainly have wanted to save the high maintenance costs for the servers.

Rainbow Six Siege Report: Bumpy start

Now, one can always be wiser in hindsight and equally claim that Ubisoft had actually done everything right at the launch of Rainbow Six: Siege. That the developers in Montreal uncompromisingly created a game that is basically a Counter-Strike for the true experts. That thanks to the many different player classes and multiplayer maps, all potential buyers were satisfied right from the launch and that the finely tuned balancing turned out flawless. However, those who bought Rainbow Six: Siege right at the release might have a slightly different impression of the first months of the online shooter.

The attacker Dokkaebi can make her enemies’ smartphones ring. This not only distracts the enemies, but also makes it easy for their team members to hear them.

After all, when the game was released four years ago, elaborately staged campaigns were still quite popular in first-person shooters, and so there was also a single-player part of sorts in Siege. However, the mode was much more of a bland accessory due to the almost non-existent story and the irrelevant AI opponents, which couldn’t serve as a reason to buy the game on its own for anyone. The single player mode should rather be seen as an introduction to the complex game mechanics, but unfortunately with almost subterranean entertainment value. Nevertheless, it can’t be said that Ubisoft put all its eggs in one basket at the release. For example, there was also a co-op mode at launch, in which you could hunt down terrorists together as a team. Today, the irrelevant co-op missions are played just as little as the single player mode. However, they can be used as an additional argument that the publisher itself was a bit afraid of releasing a pure online shooter. Likewise, Siege also suffered from some balancing difficulties at launch, a buggy matchmaking as well as various bugs that tended to crash the game. On top of that, many players complained about the low tick rate of the servers, which often caused the game to miss perfect headshots, for example. Likewise, the eleven maps and also the 20 specialists that can be unlocked at the start were a bit too few to motivate players for the game permanently. The first tests criticized exactly this somewhat too small scope and of course also the bugs. At the time, we were also of the opinion that Rainbow Six: Siege is a good game, but that it has a rather specific target group. Accordingly, the sales shortly after the release were not really exhilarating. In the UK, for example, only 76,000 copies were sold across all platforms in the first week. The low sales figures were also partly due to the fact that a terrorist attack took place in France shortly before the release of Rainbow Six: Siege and Ubisoft therefore preferred to forgo some advertising campaigns.

Rainbow Six Siege Report: More Content, More Players

Ubisoft quickly addressed the first problem of the small scope. Already three months after the release, the map “Yacht” was added to the game and you could also enjoy two fresh operators (player classes). The operators were either available to – Season Pass owners before everyone else, or they could be unlocked without spending any money, while the new map was available to everyone right from the start. The fact that the multiplayer maps were available for free also had an understandable reason: In contrast to shooter greats of the time like Battlefield 4, they didn’t want to divide the community with the new content. In the following months, three similar DLCs were released, bringing the number of maps to 15 after about a year, and you could choose from a total of 28 different specialists.

Operator Fuze can take a ballistic shield into battle and is well protected from enemy bullets.

The active support for Rainbow Six: Siege also paid off for the publisher. For the release of the third DLC in June 2016, Ubisoft was able to issue the success message that the game now had over ten million registered players. However, even though there were no complaints about a lack of players on the servers, matchmaking was still buggy, and every new operator had the risk of turning out to be either too strong or too weak for the multiplayer battles. Fans we asked also said that you had to be a little patient in the first year to make the battles really fun. Especially the long waiting times between the games were very annoying and sometimes led to the fact that you simply ended victories. In addition, after the first DLCs, there were great disparities between the operators. Some of the newly introduced specialists were simply too strong compared to the old ones.