It's no Hearthstone, League of Legends, or Overwatch, but Rainbow Six Siege is truly a force to be reckoned with. Released in December 2015 to mild reception, the tactical online shooter steadily gained a loyal fan base thanks to its steady flow of free maps and operator DLCs that truly add dynamic to the game.
"Rainbow Six Siege daily active user reached new record high during the last quarter. As a matter of fact, there is no better place than eSports confirm Rainbow Six Siege great momentum," said Ubisoft CEO Yves Guillemot during a company earnings call.
What's more it looks like Rainbow Six Siege is expected to stick to its DLC strategy for the foreseeable future. Ubisoft CFO Alan Martinez said this regarding Siege's success: "With more live games generating very profitable recurring sales, the need for quickly offering up sequels is less relevant."
Instead of developing a Siege sequel title, Ubisoft will continue to focus its resources in evolving and improving the current game. Last week, the developers of Siege announced its plans for the next couple of months will be to improve the playability of the game by fixing bugs, issues and improving game server reliability in a campaign they call Operation Health. However, Operation Health will also push back the originally planned Hong Kong DLC.
To celebrate the growing popularity of Siege in esports, Ubisoft is making a documentary about its Rainbow Six Invitational esports tournament, starring pro-gamers Canadian of team Continuum, Furious G of team Vitality, and Siege caster KiXSTAr. For those of you out there who are still unfamiliar with Rainbow Six Siege and how much its active gamer-base has ballooned, check out the trailer below.
One particularly unique aspect about Rainbow Six Siege is the destructability of its maps. Walls, floors and ceiling hatches can all be destroyed to create new lines of sight and new ways to control an objective. Because of this, map knowledge and extremely coordinated team communcation is so important. What's more, each operator comes armed with a unique ability that creates a new obstacle for the opposing team. With that in mind, every new operator introduced in a new DLC stands to completely overthrow the status quo and become the vital linchpin to an all new strategy.
Because of how quickly Rainbow Six Siege manages to evolve, it's easily one of the most entertaining games on esports and you'd really be missing out if you don't give this game a try. Rainbow Six Siege is available now on PC, Xbox One and PS4.
