You know my thoughts about Ubisoft. Ain't no secret that me and they don't see eye to eye on a lot. Or anything, for that matter. There's probably enough content out there showcasing me moaning about the leech-like quality of that absolute dumpster of a development pit that I could actually be considered a tertiary suspect in the second act of a crime novel where the detective starts to piece together deeply ideological motivations behind the bodies left in the wake of the killer. Of course then I'd be detained and another string of murders would occur and the police would be forced to let me go and I'd quip something smug and cryptic on my way out to drop a bit of a red herring implying I'm in on the grander plan, only for it to come out later that I had absolutely nothing to do with it and I had no reason whatsoever to bait the line like that but the writer simply forgot he'd ever given me that dialogue to begin with. Where was I?
Oh yeah, if there's one single ongoing game within the Ubisoft stable of development that even I cannot call a travesty upon the world of gaming as much as I hate it's publishers- it's Rainbow Six Siege. Siege is a unique and enduring competitive tactical hero-based shooter that has preserved it's place within the top most played games of that style deftly over the years. Even through prolonged periods of abject disinterest from the Ubisoft heads, where the game has gone large stretches of time being entirely broken thanks to rampant cheating, still people cling to that life-raft of a game with desperation whenever cries to bury the ravenous, industry eroding, interdimensional grey ooze of Ubisoft is called. Which is fair. Burying the grey ooze only poisons the land anyway according to Colour Out of Space, need to send that parasite back to the cosmos it landed from.
But know well that the success of Siege is not due to the parentage of Ubisoft, but rather in spite of it. Like drug addict parents who's child starts a success Tea Cake company that still suffers abuse and condemnation from the homestead that cripples the heart. Players form callouses around themselves to persist within the Ubisoft ecosystem, enduring the unending streams of monetisation raining down upon them from the endless store offerings, the battle pass, the banner ads shoved in your face like this is a mobile game. You might say that self respect would tell you that as a seriously player you don't belong in a place where the property holders expect blood money every other week. But those calloused hearted players tough it out, year after year, to enjoy the new operators, maps, fixes and tweaks and everything else enabled by the seedier elements of 'the Ubisoft cycle'.
Yet I guess we all have our breaking points. And for a lot of the community that breaking point came during an in-person announcement (because apparently Ubisoft do live shows for their games?) wherein the 9th year of content was discussed in the lead-up to season 2- despite the actual lack of overall new additions the game is getting beyond one new operator. (Feel like that would be a reason not to hold an in person event, were I the Ubisoft decision maker... But I guess ticket sales are important for the starving artists over at the industry's most loquacious insane asylum.) It was during this event that fans first got details on the reworking of the basic 'Rookie' class from the OG lineup which I feel like had been teased for months now- which has landed with a bit of a dud. Not least of all because it's treating the Rookie as an operator now, meaning you can only select one a match. (Which is genuinely moronic when you might have more than 1 person in a match that wants to get to grips with basic movement and maps before committing to a powered role that someone else might be better suited for. Almost like Ubisoft are trying to cause community friction.) But would you believe it, that wasn't even nearly the most frustrating part for people.
What earned the universal boos of an entire room full of fans was the announcement of a brand new subscription service that is being chucked atop the Rainbow Six game entirely unceremoniously. This is entirely unrelated, of course, to the subscription service that is already presented by Uplay, (or whatever the hell Ubisoft are calling it these days- Ubisoft Plus, Ubisoft next- who can keep track of this crap?) and marks yet another step in Ubisoft's master plan to remove the concept of ownership from gaming entirely. I'm not even being facetious there, Ubisoft's 'director of subscriptions' himself coined the concept of gamers getting 'comfortable not owning their games', which was met with a rather sound "sod off" from the community. And now that philosophy has landed with a wet thud at the door of Rainbow Six? Great...
It should be pointed out that Siege has not exactly been hard up for monetisation all these years either. They have a store front absolutely dripping with cosmetics for people to sink hundreds of dollars into, ranging from operator skins to weapons skins to unique head gear to victory dances to operator cards to gadget skins to weapon charms. And that isn't even taking into account the battlepass which demands the attention of the player regularly in order to score a list of exclusive items. The subscription service, 10 dollars a month by the way, gives you the ability to skip 10 of those battlepass levels- which saves barely any time whatsoever- but otherwise the two systems kind of sit at direct odds to one another as competing money injection sites across the same game.
And perhaps most laughable of all is what is actually offered by this pact with the subscription devil. On a very subjective level, Siege hasn't really offered the most interesting and exciting skins in the past. It's not like Fortnite where you can find totally creative and transformative models from any franchise on the earth, they have to make do squashing and morphing everything in a manner that somewhat fits a tactical shooter. You'll stick get your totally moronic Halo Crossovers which present armour that makes Frost stand-out like a sore thumb against pretty much any background, but most people don't proliferate stuff like that for obvious reasons. (Don't reinforce bad behaviour.) Objectively, the subscription service presents an ugly-ass exclusive skin, a single Bravo pack (one!) and one weapon skin. They couldn't even pretend to offer anything worthwhile, it is honestly shameful.
And it bears pointing out that Siege is not a free game. It never was. Thus piling monetisation upon monetisation like this only serves to remind players more and more about how little value they're getting out of the odd pack they do give up and shell out for. Ubisoft are a company of absolute vultures stalking about their player bases and opportunistic dive bombing every spare penny which glints off the moon, and the ugliness is becoming more and more apparent with each passing year. Even at their absolute best Ubisoft's mere presence is a blight upon their games and the sooner their audience finally has enough and starts abandoning them- the better for all this accused industry.
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