Ubisoft recently unveiled a monthly subscription service—dubbed “R6 membership”—for its long-running competitive tactical shooter, Rainbow 6 Siege. And, as you probably guessed, it got Siege fans absolutely riled up.
The R6 membership announcement came paired with the reveal of Operation New Blood on stage at the BLAST R6 Major Manchester 2024 event for Rainbow Six Siege. While the new operation had a lukewarm reception, the monthly subscription service clearly didn’t sit well with fans. The announcement video was drowned out by boos from the live crowd at the LAN event (check out the live reaction video on TikTok captured by Royza Gaming). Reception from the online community isn’t much different, either.
Rainbow Six Siege’s subreddit has since seen a flurry of posts calling for the boycott of the R6 Membership, which is poised to launch in June offering subscribers exclusive content drops, animated skins, and premium battle pass access. “[This] definitely came straight from the shareholders,” commented one player remarking at service seeming like a cash-grab. “[Rainbow Six Siege] devs really be having a good day and then shareholders shoved this idea for a purely money-making scheme down their throats.”
“It’s not going to do anything but give them bad light and make the players very unhappy,” another player said. This indeed seems to be the case, with the game’s Steam review rating dropping to a “Mostly Positive” 77 percent from its original “Very Positive” 85 percent.
The negative reception to R6 membership was seemingly exacerbated by the lack of meaningful content in the new season and the ongoing issue with cheaters. The subscription service being a bit too similar to Fortnite’s Crew Membership didn’t sit well with players, either. “I understand they took [the] idea from Fortnite with [its] Crew membership. But [the] difference is, Fortnite is [a] free to play game, and R6 is not,” wrote one user.
A slew of comments, however, defended Ubisoft’s decision to introduce a monthly subscription service to continue funding development of the live service shooter. “If you want Ubisoft to keep the servers on for the game, they have to make money off of it somehow,” one player said, citing the strictly cosmetic nature of the membership benefits.
We’ll keep an eye out to see if Ubisoft changes its plans for R6 Membership, which is otherwise slated to launch on June 28.
