Ubisoft announced an ambitious Year 8 roadmap for Rainbow Six Siege introducing new player protection initiatives like Mousetrap, four action-packed seasons with four new Operators, a new map, four Battle Passes, onboarding and practice features for new and returning players, balancing changes, exciting events, and many more updates to reinforce the game as the ultimate tactical shooter experience.
During Year 7, Rainbow Six Siege introduced cross-play and cross-progression, four new Operators, two new maps, many anti-cheat features, a Reputation System to reduce toxicity and encourage positive behavior, numerous Operator balancing updates, Privacy Mode, UI and HUD improvements, and more. In Year 8, Ubisoft continues its long-term commitment to make Rainbow Six Siege an exciting, thoughtful, and fair game.
YEAR 8 ROADMAP
Commanding Force, the first season of Year 8, will bring the Brazilian Attacker Brava and important updates including an immersive reload rework. Season 1 also adds the ground-breaking anti-Mouse & Keyboard solution on Console, Mousetrap, which will prevent cheaters from using an unfair advantage when playing against players with controllers. Season 2 will introduce a Swedish Operator, an immersive rework of the Consulate map, and the launch of the Permanent Arcade Playlist. In addition, the Shooting Range will receive an update to add new target modes to assist new and returning players in practicing before matches.
Season 3’s Operator arrives from South Korea, bringing an in-depth rework of Quick Match – more details below. The last Operator of the year will be from Portugal alongside a brand-new map and a vital onboarding feature: the Defender AI playlist, offering a new way for players to practice Operators, test strategies, and perfect their approach on different maps.
PLAYER PROTECTION
Continuing from Year 7, the development team will continue prioritizing player protection and further anti-cheat efforts. Initiatives being introduced include the new QB security system, which aims to increase the difficulty of producing cheats; and Mousetrap, launching in Season 1, a new security measure aiming to reduce the impact of Mouse & Keyboard cheaters on consoles. This game-changing feature intends to remove the advantage that those cheaters have on the gameplay experience and to make the experience fairer for everyone. Mousetrap will receive iterations from season to season and will stand out as the first notable example of a feature like this in the competitive gaming industry.
Alongside the Reputation System released in beta last year, the team is working on a new initiative. The Player Commendation System will introduce an appreciation system allowing players to rate other players on the experience they had playing together. This system will be monitored to ensure it will be fair for everyone.
There will also be new requirements to play Ranked that aim to reduce inadequate accounts during your play experience and smurfing. In addition, Privacy Mode, introduced for PC last year to protect creators, will be launching later on the console for all players. Overall, in Year 8, the development team seeks to make Rainbow Six Siege a more cooperative, welcoming, and safe game for everyone.
Further anti-toxicity measures include a new Reputation Penalty for abusive voice chat. While active, this penalty mutes repeat offenders by default to prevent hateful and disruptive content in voice chat. Muted players can still use voice chat but will only be heard by players who manually unmute them.
YEAR 8 PASS
From 20th February until 20th March, players can purchase the limited-time Year 8 Pass to unlock the four seasonal Battle Passes, 14-day early access to new Operators when they launch, a 10% VIP discount on the shop, a full Operator bundle for Ace, up to 2,400 R6 Credits, and more. The Premium Year Pass offers all the before-mentioned perks plus 20 extra Battle tokens that players can use to unlock rewards faster.
CONSOLE & PLAYER COMFORT IMPROVEMENTS
Following Year 7’s updates, further dedicated updates will launch this year for console players – alongside Mousetrap and Privacy Mode for console, controller layout flexibility, and controller remapping will also arrive this season. Quick Match will also receive an extensive update to make it stand out as much as Ranked and Unranked. This will cut down on the amount of downtime that players have in Quick Match and reduce the amount of repetition so players can get into the game quicker and experience Siege’s action at its best.
Players can expect a refresher coming to the Play section menu UI: three categories – Competitive, Quick Play, and Training – that will contain existing and new playlists. There will also be a dynamic pattern for each of those categories below the tile, allowing players to directly access their last played playlists inside that category. For the playlists that have different game modes, a settings button will let players select the game modes directly instead of having to go through the global settings button. Throughout Year 8, further improvements to increase player comfort will continue being added in-game.
ONBOARDING & PRACTICE FEATURES
To better introduce new players to Rainbow Six Siege, Year 8 will prioritize onboarding in a different way each season. Season 1 will add Beginner Challenges, a new progression tool allowing new players to learn how to play and unlock new Operators as they play. Season 2 adds the Aiming Lane to the Shooting Range, letting players customize skills, movement, the number of targets, and numerous customizations including advanced techniques like headshots only.
Season 3 brings Playable tutorials – brand-new maps for the player to learn different gameplay elements like destruction, verticality, droning, repelling, etc. Finally, Season 4 introduces the Defender AI playlist – a safe place to teach others how to play new Operators and maps. This playlist will use a machine learning algorithm informed by current players.
BALANCING AND PLAYLIST UPDATES
The development team will continue reworking several Operators this year including Zero, Frost, and others. Year 8 will add an immersive reload update, a tactical mechanic, an Observation blocker that lets Defenders control what intel is given to Attackers, and a full rework of shield Operators to improve players’ experience while playing them.
