How Rainbow Six Siege lasted ten years and brought in 100m players

When Rainbow Six Siege first came out, its success was not guaranteed.

It was 2015, when the AAA industry was still trying to figure out what a service-based game looked like, with an eye on the success of Destiny the year before. Rainbow Six came with baggage, too; it was best known for single-player and PVE, and Siege’s move to multiplayer-only, at a time when most shooters still boasted single-player campaigns, made it seem poorer value for money.

On top of that, the French publishing giant had to pull the planned November launch at the last second after terror attacks in Paris. The game debuted a month later to a broadly positive critical reception but weak sales, and after then immediately running into server issues its future seemed far from certain.

Yet it has endured. Ubisoft has expanded the game ever since, bringing a regular cadence of content, as well as squashing bugs and supporting an esports scene. As of February 2026, the game boasts 100 million players, a decent increase from the 70 million Ubisoft announced in 2020.

Speaking to GamesIndustry.biz, Ubisoft’s VP of marketing and esports for Rainbow Six Siege, François-Xavier Deniele, insists that the French publishing giant always had high hopes for the game, something that was bolstered by the positive reception it received during the many playtests the company conducted before release.

“We put our game into players hands many times – the alpha, beta, open beta, closed beta. Each time the reception was good,” he says. “It was a bright proposition for the FPS market. We never stopped putting energy behind it because we knew we had something special. We can say that, after ten years, we were right about that: the game is massive.”

When it launched, Siege was an early example of the games-as-a-service model in the AAA space. It was a change of pace for the development team, who had to adapt to working on something that was constantly live.

“The analogy I use is your car is always running, but you need to change it in real time,” Deniele explains. “It’s very challenging. When the game launched, it was normal to have DLC after release. But this was constant – we had to adapt to the reality of the game, so managing servers, balancing, and everything that goes into a live game. And on top of that, you have to produce regular content because you have to keep the game alive. People will get tired of playing the exact same thing.”

The nature of the game’s development “changed drastically,” he says. “You have to be able to create content every three months, you have to have a lot of processes to integrate player feedback and on top of that, you also need to integrate the fact you have a competitive ecosystem. You need to make sure you stabilise the game to produce good and fair competition around the world. It’s a ton of energy.”

These days, the Siege team has a decent idea of how to run a service-based title, though that’s not to say it has become any easier.

“It’s always a challenge because there’s always a new reality facing this kind of title,” Deniele says. “Firstly, the cadence of content you need to produce, secondly, adapting to the reality of the market. Sometimes new competitors come in with a new recipe, you need to adapt to understand what they are bringing to the game.”

The slew of new content that Ubisoft has brought to Rainbow Six Siege over the years is one of the reasons for the game’s prolonged success, according to content creator David Ralph.

“The depth and constant updates to content within the game are what set it aside from the likes of Battlefield, Call of Duty and Counter Strike,” he says. “You have a wide variety of characters to learn, each with unique weapons and gadgets that all perform different tasks.”

“After ten years you are entering the second generation of players”

As service-based games age, developers and publishers need to strike a balance between attracting new players and retaining their existing audience. For Siege, Deniele says, both sides of this equation are important. “You cannot just retain what you have. After ten years you are entering the second generation of players.”

“Acquisition is still very important because you need to have a new wave of people playing the game,” he continues. “But retention is very important – are you able to keep people interested in your game? You need to be very focused on how you keep people after a certain amount of time – what we call Day 28, where we know that people will stay and they are interested.”

“That’s where the content cadence and esports are very strong marketing tools because it’s showing people everything [they] need to do to continue to be at this level.”

But acquiring new users for a game like Rainbow Six Siege is challenging due to the game’s competitive nature, a problem it shares with very different titles like League of Legends and Street Fighter. “The more content you add into the game, the greater the level of knowledge players need to have to understand what’s happening,” says Deniele.

In fact, when Ubisoft released Rainbow Six Siege X in June 2025 – the current, modernised version of the 2015 original – the company focused on making it as easy as possible for new users to join. Users only have access to a handful of characters, with new operators being unlocked as they play, with the idea being that players aren’t overwhelmed by the choice and complexity of unique playstyles right from the start.

Alongside Siege X, Ubisoft introduced Free Access, a limited free-to-play version, which represented a huge swing into a famously challenging monetisation model. New titles bank – increasingly unsuccessfully – on grabbing a large enough audience and convincing them to spend. Siege, meanwhile, had already been out for almost a decade when Free Access rolled out, which meant that while some risk was removed there were new problems to contend with.

“It’s a challenge production-wise because you need to rethink your onboarding,” Deniele explains. “New people are coming in, but there’s less interest, as they can test the game and leave. When you buy something, it’s because you are interested and want to try it out and maybe give it more of a chance.” The lower barrier to entry that free-to-play offers also opens the game up to bad actors; people who want to ruin the experience for others and are able to easily access the game due to the lack of a price point.

“We made the decision to open a certain portion of the game for free, but not the entire game,” Deniele says. “If you want to play ranked or get to a high level, you have to pay. The main problem with free-to-play is that there are people who just want to troll. It’s a balance. But what’s very interesting is it’s opening the game up to new territories and regions and a new generation of players who are more friendly towards free-to-play than they were ten years ago.”

“There is an ecosystem around esports that needs to be sustainable for everyone”

Since the dawn of esports, there’s been constant conversation about whether it is an industry in itself or whether its just promotion for the game being played. For Siege, Deniele describes the pro-games scene as “the best marketing tool”, saying it’s a way to “celebrate a game” with its top players. But one interesting wrinkle is that Ubisoft is also helping support the esports ecosystem as a whole via the Rainbow Six Sharing Programme. As the name suggests, this shares revenue with clubs “to help sustain them because we need them in the ecosystem.” “There is an ecosystem around esports that’s very important and needs to be sustainable for everyone,” Deniele continues. “Where the publisher has a strong place to take to help the ecosystem stay alive, but we shouldn’t forget that we are here to celebrate the game first and what the game is.”

Within the last year, there’s been a considerable shake-up at Ubisoft, largely centred around the creation of Vantage Studios, a new subsidiary backed by Chinese tech and entertainment behemoth, Tencent. This new ‘Creative House’ is home to the company’s most prized IPs – Assassin’s Creed, Far Cry and Rainbow Six.

For Deniele, there’s a lot to like about being one of Ubisoft’s crown jewels, but one of the things that is exciting him most is the close relationship the Rainbow Six team can now have with Tencent.

“Our partnership with Tencent also opens up new expertise to grow this kind of game”

“We are still completely part of Ubisoft and have all of the company’s strengths,” he says. “But we are able to be agile because leadership is focused on Rainbow Six. It’s helped us be more focused and build a more direct, integrated relationship with people in production and other areas of expertise. Our partnership with Tencent also opens up new expertise to grow this kind of game because of their knowledge.

“For us [being part of Vantage] was important, because Rainbow Six Siege proved it was one of the major FPS titles of the last ten years and will be for the next ten years. We have to put more focus on it and it will certainly be one of the winning aspects of Vantage.”

After a long time in development, Ubisoft is releasing the mobile version of Rainbow Six Siege on February 27. This will bring the tactical shooter to a new audience, including China.

“It’s a very important moment because I am very impressed with how the team successfully brought the game to mobile,” Deniele says. “Being able to go to a new kind of player or a new region is exciting. There is a lot of new stuff we want to do, including China at one point. That’s a very important topic for us; we want to see where we can go with the brand and the franchise.”

Over ten years into Siege’s journey, Deniele and the team clearly have big ambitions for the shooter. But the plan is to stick to the game’s core and not try to be everything for everyone.

“[The plan is to] stay focused on what we are,” he says. “We are a five vs five close quarter combat. We are very tactical, there’s a focus on destruction. That’s who we are, that’s our position. We want to focus on this, but make this the best thing possible and integrate new technology.”

The newest technology of the moment is, of course, AI. Ubisoft’s recent Teammates showcase shows that the company’s looking at how shooters can build on the technology, but Deniele won’t commit to its use in Rainbow Six. “There are things that need to be taken into consideration,” he says, diplomatically, suggesting that AI could one day serve as a training aid. “When it’s helping you, it’s very interesting.”