With the Six Invitational 2022 coming to a close, we're excited to reveal what's coming next for Rainbow Six Esports in Year 7 and beyond.

As shared by Ubisoft's newly appointed Senior Director of global Esports and Competitive Gaming in his recent interview, "the past two years, and the pandemic that hit the world shortly after we announced our new regionalized program, put all of us to the test on so many levels. We came out stronger, more agile. We learned a lot." Now our focus turns to 2022 and beyond, and we want to reiterate how grateful we are for the continued support you've shown to the game and its esports scene since it launched six years ago, and for the valuable feedback you've given us throughout the years.

As a new year is starting for Rainbow Six Siege, with the new esports season just around the corner, we wanted to share with you our plans for new esports-focused game features, for our Global Circuit with our roadmap of future international events, and for R6 SHARE.

esports updates coming to siege in year 7

Alongside the content and updates coming to Rainbow Six Siege in Year 7 for the community at large, the development team is also bringing new features and updates dedicated to improving your experience as an esports viewer.

ADDING OBSERVER SLOTS TO IMPROVE BROADCAST QUALITY FOR ONLINE MATCHES

Update: This feature has been postponed to a later date. Additional details will be shared later on.

Coming this spring with the game's Year 7 Season 2 release, we're excited to announce that 3 additional observer slots will be added to custom online games, adding up to a total of 4 dedicated observer slots. With an important part of our competitive circuit being played online during the season, we have been looking at ways of bringing our online competition to the same broadcast quality as the one we offer during LAN events. Thanks to these additional slots, fans will have a clearer picture of the action going on during the match for any online competitions, whether it be our regional leagues or local tournaments, or competitions organized by third party tournament organizers.

EXPLORING NEW ANGLES WITH DETACHED OPERATOR CAMERA

In Year 7, on top of the additional observer slots, we are working on allowing 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 our viewers. Through this new functionality, observers during live matches, as well as during replays, will be able to use new camera angles to provide more opportunities for fans to see the action at play.

IMPROVING REPLAY FUNCTIONALITIES

While continuing to work on improving the replay feature across the board, one key focus for Year 7 will be to increase the shelf life of replay files and making their content as useful as possible to answer the community's needs. If replays are currently accessible for a few weeks only, until the next game patch is released, we are looking to extend this duration to make them accessible during the entire game season. Furthermore, as we've seen that the community has been using replays to help with cheater detection, we're adding a feature to directly select and report suspicious players while watching the replay. These additional features will grant players more time and more options to use replays for various purposes.

regional leagues kickoff & roadmap of international events for season 2022 and beyond

Every year, the Six Invitational marks the conclusion of a season, crowning the World Champions across all regions of the Rainbow Six Esports Global Circuit. It also marks the upcoming start of a new esports season.

We're happy to announce that the Season 2022 will officially kick-start on March 9th, with the launch of Stage 1 of the regional leagues in Asia-Pacific, Europe, Latin America and North America. Information on each regional circuit, including the leagues' schedules and formats, will be shared in the coming weeks.

In the meantime, we're happy to unveil our roadmap of international events for Season 2022, with hopes of welcoming back fans on-site for each and every one of them, following strict sanitary measures. We are designing those events to cater to a live audience while monitoring closely the evolution of the pandemic to take the appropriate actions, should the situation require it, to continue ensuring the health and safety of our players, fans, staff, and partners.  

Season 2022:

• Stage 1 Major - May 2022: United-States.
• Stage 2 Major - August 2022: United Arab Emirates. Relocated. The exact location is yet to be determined.
• Stage 3 Major - November 2022: Asia.
• Six Invitational: as we work on our long-term plans, we are looking to start exploring new locations on a regular basis for the Six Invitationals. We can already share that the Six Invitational will leave Montreal for its 2024 edition in 2 years. For the upcoming 2023 edition, we are still looking at our different options, with all cards on the table. This is exciting and we look forward to sharing more information.

The Rainbow Six World Cup:  

We truly wish to make the Rainbow Six World Cup a unique event for the entire Siege Family to gather and enjoy, and for local communities to share their love, pride and unconditional support for the team that will represent their country or region on the worldwide stage. As the situation around the pandemic remains uncertain, we have decided to postpone the Rainbow Six World Cup to 2023.

r6 share: 2022 adjustments

In September 2020, we announced R6 SHARE, a new milestone for our revenue sharing program for Rainbow Six Esports. After over a year of learnings, we have made adjustments and improvements to continue building a long-lasting, sustainable, and healthy competitive ecosystem.

While all organizations involved in R6 SHARE will continue to receive a portion of the net sales of esports in-game items, such as operator bundles or weapon skins, we have adjusted the program to better reflect the impact our member organizations have on Rainbow Six Siege.

CHANGES COMING TO THE TIER SYSTEM

As we're preparing for the upcoming 2022 season in Rainbow Six Esports we have decided to adjust R6 SHARE's ranking criteria and have simplified the tier allocation system for the program, moving from a 3-tier system to a 2-tier system.

We want to recognize the efforts and investments of our member organizations in making Rainbow Six Esports shine and felt that these efforts should be rewarded with the possibility to move to Tier 1 more easily. 

To the exception of teams that have been relegated from the top regional leagues and therefore removed from R6 SHARE, there will be no tier demotion in 2021. The top 5 Tier 2 teams from the last ranking will join the 10 teams currently in Tier 1, for a total of 15 teams, while the remaining organizations will be placed in Tier 2.

Starting in the Summer of 2022, tiers will be adjusted once a year based on the overall ranking of the year, with the top 15 teams falling in Tier 1, while the rest is placed in Tier 2.

The detailed Tier Placement of each team will be communicated in March, closer to start of the season.

REVENUE DISTRIBUTION BALANCING

In order to better reflect the successes our member organizations have in promoting and selling their team branded items, while refocusing league and event items towards sustaining our competitive program, the revenue sharing has been adjusted as follows:

• Team items (the in-game items branded to the colors of each of the professional teams involved in the program) will be adjusted from a 70/30 Ubisoft/Organization split to a 50/50 revenue distribution.

• League items (in-game items for fans wanting to embrace and support their region in Rainbow Six Esports) will be moving from a 70/30 split to an 80/20 split between Ubisoft and all member organizations, with Ubisoft's share purposed to funding the Esports Circuit.

• Major items (in-game items celebrating the Six Majors): 20% of the net revenue from these items will contribute to the prize pool of the corresponding Six Major event.

• Road to Six Invitational BattlePass items (in-game items branded to the colors of the Six Invitational): 20% of the net revenue from these items will contribute to the prize pool of that year's Six Invitational, up to a maximum cap of $3,000,000 USD.

A WIDER CHOICE OF TEAM-BRANDED ITEMS FOR FANS TO SUPPORT THEIR TEAM

Thanks to our new 2-tier system which includes more branded items for each team that has moved up from Tier 2 to Tier 1 and from Tier 3 to Tier 2, fans can now support their favorite teams through an extended choice of items.

Teams play an active role in the selection of their Team items and are directly involved in the design of the relevant items to ensure they best reflect their identity. More information on the content of the Team items will be coming soon, with the first Tier 1 Team items set to drop in March 2022.

stay in touch

Don't miss anything about Rainbow Six Esports by following us on Twitter on @R6esports, @R6esportsNA, @R6esportsEU, @R6EsportsAPAC and @R6esportsBR, on Instagram @r6esports and on our website.