Ubisoft Faces Backlash After Censoring RAINBOW SIX SIEGE Maps And Icons Ahead Of China Release

That escalated quickly. Last week, Ubisoft announced that some major “aesthetic changes” are coming to Rainbow Six: Siege that will remove many references to death, sex and gambling, as the studio is preparing the title's expansion into Asian territory in partnership with Ubisoft shareholder and Chinese games behemoth Tencent. As you can guess, this announcement made some fans pretty angry.

Some members of the Rainbow Six Siege fandom deeply believe that Ubisoft is “bowing its head” to China by slightly altering some maps. The aforementioned altering means that the players should say goodbye to Operators that have skull masks and face paint, some of which players surely paid money for, and also slot machines, neon signs of dancing women, and even environmental blood.

All that effort was put to create one, global version of the game allowing users in China enjoy Rainbow Six Siege with players all around the world. It seems that the Siege fandom doesn't appreciate the idea, as upset fans bombarded Siege with negative reviews over the weekend, dropping its reception to “mixed” on Steam. Just in the past few days, almost 1,500 negative reviews have appeared.

It looks like Ubisoft doesn't want to repeat Activision-Blizzard's mistake (following the announcement of Diablo Immortal, Activision Blizzard's stock fell to its lowest point since January yesterday, closing out the day down 6.74%) and it actively trying to calm the players down. In a special note posted on Reddit, community manager UbiNoty suggested that the global version has been scrapped:

"To help allay some concerns about the changes and the future.

Moving forward, we do recognize and understand that for some elements, it is not possible to have a completely global build. Thus, there will be some things that are split build-wise. While our goal is to maintain as close a parallel as possible between builds, we will also not compromise the core integrity of the gameplay and mechanics as they exist currently.

Edit: For additional clarification, this branched build will be region locked, and will not have access to the worldwide data centers to engage with our existing player base - furthermore, VPNs will not function as a workaround."

The Siege is a brand-new style of gameplay embracing the reality of counter-terrorist operatives across the world: intense and asymmetrical close-quarters combat between attackers and defenders. As a defender, you will have the means to transform your environment into strongholds to prevent the attackers from breaching. As an attacker, you will have many planning options to face this challenge and defuse these situations.