Ubisoft has announced a new patch update is arriving to Rainbow Six Siege. No, it's not the long-awaited Season 3 Hong Kong DLC just yet, but it's a big update nontheless – we're talking up to 42GB on PC. So what exactly is the new update all about?
Via the official Rainbow Six Siege blog, the main objective for the new Rainbow Six Siege Y2S3.0 patch is a long-term improvement on how Ubisoft will implement patches moving forward. As Ubisoft explains, the patch will reset "the foundation that future patches are built upon, and establishing the Y2S3.0 patch as the new baseline that we will update the game client from."
When it's time for an update, Siege will simply download a new forge that contains the new file without replacing the original. This method simplifies the patching process and reduces download size. Over time, however, it leads to a lot of wasted space on disk, which is why the Y2S3.0 patch is necessary.
Because of the complete revamp, Ubisoft must replace the Rainbow Six Siege game data, all compressed archive files in the game, in order to move forward. But following Y2S3.0 update, the data forges will be consolidated to take less space on your harddrive and improve game loading speeds by up to 10 percent. What's more, by revamping the compression algorithm at the same time, Ubisoft claims future patches will reduce in size and produce up to 15 percent better loading time as well.
Still, 42GB sounds enormous for a patch nontheless. Ubisoft will also offer new graphic texture quality levels for PC. Ranging from "low" to "Ultra," the patch update will improve character textures and "significantly increase" environment texture quality in the game. PCs below 6GB of VRAM, however, will not have the Ultra HD patch and the update will only require 26GB instead of 42.
Finally, gaming consoles Xbox One and PS4 will only require 15GB worth of space.
There is no official release date for the Rainbow Six Siege Y2S3.0 patch update, but expect it to arrive sometime later this month. Stay tuned as we learn more about the anticipated Hong Kong DLC in the days ahead.
