The newest season of Rainbow Six Siege, Deep Freeze, has been formally delayed to a later date. There’s just one small issue: the season has already loaded on the Xbox platform, which has left players in complete limbo.
Where Ubisoft goes from here is anyone’s guess. There’s no way they can allow Xbox players the new season and not anyone else, the outcry would be too severe. Rolling back the new season on the platform would take time, and would lock players out of playing the game for a few days. Allowing the new season to stay locked until release would take even more time, and would be unacceptable for Xbox players.
Ubisoft’s top brass has put itself between a rock and a hard place. The choice to hold off on delaying the season until moments before it was set to drop has resulted in one of the worst things that could happen: denying paying customers the ability to use the thing they purchased.
It’s good that some bugs are being fixed with the new map that will drop with the season, Lair. It’s probably good that new operator Tubarão is probably going to eat a nerf before the full release. The last-minute call has placed a significant portion of their player base in limbo, however. The replies to Ubisoft’s initial point show how frustrated the players have become, calling Ubisoft everything from “pathetic” to “embarrassing.”
There’s no real good place to go from here, other than taking the arduous process of rolling back the new season on Xbox and compensating players for their time with some kind of in-game currency. The outcome is still embarrassing for Ubisoft, whose indecisiveness forced this situation that didn’t need to happen. As long as they continue to treat the Siege player base like they’re an afterthought, the distrust of the company that’s already felt in the community will deepen.
