Rainbow Six Siege aiming to go free-to-play

• The developer of Rainbow Six Siege wants to go free-to-play with the title
• Ubisoft want to counter issues like smurfing before they make any plans
• Free-to-play has been enormously successful for games like Fortnite and CS:GO

The free-to-play model has been a huge success for games like Fortnite and Apex Legends, and it seems Ubisoft is eyeing it up for Rainbow Six Siege.  

Speaking to PC Gamer, game director Leroy Athanasoff explained how they’re looking to go free-to-play with Rainbow Six Siege down the line.  

“It’s a company decision,” Athanassoff told the publication. “I think on the development team we want that at some point. We want the game to be accessible to everyone.” 

So what’s stopping them? The developer explained the issue of smurfing needs to be addressed beforehand, whereby veteran players create new accounts to play low-level, rookie players.  

If this wasn’t addressed and it became free to create accounts, the problem would become even bigger than it is now. Ubisoft similarly see this as a problem and are looking into a system able to determine the rank of players much faster.  

“What’s important for us is that we find out as soon as possible that a player is highly skilled in the things that matter,” Athanasoff added.  

“The problem right now is that you can play a certain amount of matches with Copper players while you’re a Diamond.” 

Rainbow Six Siege recently released its roadmap plan for Year 5, featuring Lara Croft skins, reworked maps, and slightly less operators. 

The roadmap was released ahead of the Six Invitational 2020 earlier this month, where Spacestation Gaming beat Ninjas in Pyjamas to claim the trophy.