During the Rainbow Six Siege Manchester Major tournament held May 16 to 26, a new subscription service was announced that was met with a storm of boos by attendees.
On Sunday (May 26), the final day of the tournament, Ubisoft announced it was adding a new subscription service to tactical FPS Rainbow Six Siege. For £7.99 per month, or £65.99 per year, players can sign up and get access to operator bundles, ten level skips on the premium battle pass, plus the premium battle pass, as well as bravo packs, credits, an operator voucher, and exclusive skins.
The problem is, Rainbow Six Siege is already a priced game, not free-to-play. It currently costs £24.99, so the yearly membership is more than double the cost of the base game. The first drops from the new membership will be coming June 28.
@royzagaming New siege membership #r6 #r6siege #r6update #royzagaming
Videos are circulating online of attendees at the Manchester Major booing the announcement as it happened. It’s unsurprising players are unhappy to hear Ubisoft is planning to charge them more. Ubisoft director of subscriptions, Philippe Tremblay said back in January that gamers need to get “comfortable” with not owning their games. Its popular racing game The Crew was delisted from storefronts, its servers were taken offline, and it was removed from player libraries in April.
Also announced was a rework of the recruit, Siege‘s original operator. It will be getting attacker and defender variants and the option to choose two different gadgets to help in matches. Defenders Fenrir and Solis are receiving nerfs, and a new Endless Drill mode is coming.
Rainbow Six Siege creative director Alexander Karpazis has said there are no plans for a sequel of the game that launched back in 2015.
In other news, hell-hound Karanak is coming to Total War: Warhammer 3 for free.