Today, at the Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six Invitational 2022, Rainbow Six Siege’s most prestigious esports competition of the year, Ubisoft announced the roadmap for the game’s competitive ecosystem in Year 7 and beyond.
Alongside the content and updates coming to Rainbow Six Siege in Year 7 for the community at large, the development team will be bringing new features and updates dedicated to improving the experience of esports viewers, including:
- Additional observer slots to improve broadcast quality: coming this spring with the game’s Year 7 Season 2 release, 3 additional observer slots will be added to custom online games, adding up to a total of 4 dedicated observer slots. These additional slots will offer fans a clearer picture of the action going on during any online matches, thus bringing online competitions to the same broadcast quality as LAN events.
- New angles to explore with detached operator camera: in Year 7, Ubisoft is looking to allow to detach the camera showing an Operator’s point of view during a match to put it anywhere on the map, thus providing new angles to explore and new ways to engage viewers.
- Improved replay functionalities: while continuing to work on improving the replay feature across the board, key priorities for Year 7 will be to increase the shelf life of replay files, by making them accessible during the entire game season and adding features to directly select and report suspicious players while watching a replay.
These changes will be implemented throughout the year for fans to enjoy during the 2022 competitive season and beyond. The season itself will kick off on March 9th, with the start of Stage 1 of the four regional leagues in Asia-Pacific, Europe, Latin America, and North America.
With the new season just around the corner, Ubisoft unveiled the roadmap of international events for the Rainbow Six Esports Season 2022, with hopes of welcoming back fans on-site, following strict sanitary measures. Those events are designed to cater to a live audience while Ubisoft monitors closely the evolution of the pandemic to take the appropriate actions, should the situation require it, to continue ensuring the health and safety of players, fans, staff, and partners.
- Stage 1 Major – May 2022: United States
- Stage 2 Major – August 2022: United Arab Emirates
- Stage 3 Major – November 2022: Asia
- Six Invitational: while the location and details are still in discussions for the 2023 edition, the Six Invitational will leave Montreal in 2024 to start exploring new locations on a regular basis.
In addition, as the situation around the pandemic remains uncertain, the Rainbow Six World Cup has been postponed to 2023, in order to create a truly unique event for the entire Siege Family to gather and enjoy.
Finally, to continue building a long-lasting, the sustainable, and healthy competitive ecosystem for Rainbow Six Siege, adjustments will be introduced to the R6 SHARE program in Year 7, including a simplified tier allocation system for teams in the program, moving from a 3-tier system to a 2-tier system. Recognizing the efforts and investments of member organizations in making Rainbow Six Esports shine, the revamped tier system will reward these efforts with the possibility to move to Tier 1 more easily, a wider choice of team-branded items for fans to support their team, and a revenue distribution on those items adjusted from the previous 70/30 Ubisoft/Organization split to a 50/50 revenue distribution.
