Since late 2015, Ubisoft’s Rainbow Six Siege has had general success and influxes of its player base along with continual maintenance and events in game. Any developer wants a game to sell the best it can and as far across the world as possible. Ubisoft is currently preparing Siege for a release across multiple Asian countries. However, there has been some backlash from players on the upcoming changes that will be made to the game so that it complies with certain international restrictions.
In a post on their website, Ubisoft explains that any changes will not affect gameplay and then proceeds to give some examples. Siege was to be maintained as one global version so that the developers do not have to split the game into “two parallel builds.” While this would allow the team to address problems and other fixes more quickly, current players would have to adapt.
Most of the admitted changes are visual and focus on art style in order to “not compromis[e] what makes Rainbow Six Siege the game that you know today.” Some of the upcoming adjustments include: changing Action Feed Icons to less violent symbols, changing violent environmental artwork such as skulls to hooded figures, removing gambling machines in level designs, and drastically reducing the amount of environment blood inflicted and shown. An example of the Action Feed Icons can be seen below:
After countless negative reactions on the game’s subreddit, Ubisoft has responded in stating that they understand that some elements of Siege will not be able to be maintained on a single build. So their plan now is to have a branched build for Asian markets that “will be region locked, and will not have access to the worldwide data centers to engage with our existing player base.” Players on the feed are still confused as to the exact meaning of the post and what the new build will entail.
Rainbow Six Siege is available for the Xbox One, PlayStation 4, and PC.