Last week, it was announced that the new season for Rainbow Six Siege would be delayed minutes before it was meant to launch. This follows expected Ubisoft Montreal behavior of not communicating with players and giving blanket statements to bigger issues. This is no longer a surprise as Rainbow Six Siege has gained notoriety for being horrible at communicating with fans in regards to server issues, season launches, and balancing changes. Finally, nearly a week after the season was meant to launch, it was announced that Operation Deep Freeze will be officially launching on Wednesday December 6th. This news comes out after the development team promised to give updates on what exactly the problem was with the launch but remained radio silent until the new announcement. 

❄Operation Deep Freeze is releasing on December 6th! pic.twitter.com/25g5FnSTAv

— Rainbow Six Siege (@Rainbow6Game) December 4, 2023

There were surrounding rumors that the season was actually delayed to a Battle Pass glitch in which players could not purchase it and Ubisoft was afraid that this would affect sales. If this rumor is true, which we will probably never know, it is just a blatant example of how a lot of this industry needs to check itself if an entire season of content is being delayed because of a Battle pass. Ubisoft claims it was due to a glitch in the new map coming out this season, named Lair, but players on the play test server have had nothing but positive things to say regarding the map. The possibility of a glitch in the new map delaying the season drop is highly unlikely. 

Saw some rumours that there was issues with the Battle Pass showing up in Deep Freeze, Ubi had already set up a warning for it not working.

Wouldn’t surprise me if the new season delay was cause of this. They were probably scared it would affect the sales.

— VarsityGaming (@VarsityGamingTV) November 29, 2023

Either way it looks like Rainbow is going back to back for horrible season launches to end the year, hopefully for the beginning of Season 1 year 9 starts a new era for the title as one that players can actually rely on Ubisoft Montreal for proper feedback and met dates.