Ubisoft working on in-game Rainbow Six tournaments after Year 5 promise

After promising in-game tournaments during the Six Invitational 2020 panel, Ubisoft is still working on delivering it for Rainbow Six. The feature is set to bring the coordinated play experience to players outside of ranked.

Want to play ranked with your friends but can’t five-stack because of your MMR? Ubisoft is working on a feature to let you play competitively with friends, against players of similar skill, with some in-game rewards to boot.

Codenamed “R6 Cup”, the in-game tournament system first teased during the Year 5 panel is yet to make its debut. However, two years on, it could be finally just around the corner.

Confirming as much during a recent developer AMA, the Siege team is hard at work on bringing the feature, which is akin to League of Legends’ Clash and Valorant’s upcoming in-game tournament system, but have hit some technological roadblocks.

“We realized that we need to improve our online tech. We are changing the whole online architecture to something we call ‘micro services’,” associate game director Aurelien Chiron told players on Reddit.

The micro services system will ensure that if one thing fails, like the in-game shop or the R6 Cup system, the entire game doesn’t go down ⁠— ala the “Crash” epidemic on League Clash’s launch.

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“That’s why we had no choice but to delay and wait until this tech change is fully finished, which will take a bit more time as it is complex and deep. This is one of the reasons for features being sometimes postponed for more than a year,” the developers added.

The transfer is taking some time, and a rework of the ranked system has been pushed up the priority list in the R6 Cup’s place. However, the in-game tournament feature, which will be activated on all weekends, could be coming as soon as Year 7.

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Chiron called it the “end game” of Rainbow Six, giving regular players “the closest” thing possible to an official tournament.

While specifics of the R6 Cup system aren’t yet available, including a release date, we will keep you updated once Ubisoft releases more details.