Rainbow Six Siege gets review bombed after Chinese censorship announcement

[midian182]

Why it matters: Another game is being review bombed on Steam, causing its former ‘Mostly Positive’ rating to drop to ‘Mixed.’ This time, it’s Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six Siege that has got gamers worked up. The reason? Developer Ubisoft’s removal of sexual content, blood, and gambling in a new update—a move that ensures the game complies with content restrictions in Asia.

In a developer blog last week, Ubisoft wrote that as it worked toward preparing Rainbow Six Siege for expansion into Asia territories, “there will be some adjustments made to our maps and icons to ensure compliance.” These cosmetic changes will apply globally as this means less work than maintaining dual builds.

“This will allow us to be more agile as a development team, and address issues more quickly. Having the same people working on a singular global version of the game ensures we only need to do the work once,” explained the company.

“In addition, we can guarantee that any future changes are aligned with the global regulations we are working towards.”

Slot machines, skulls, dagger icons, and blood splatter are just some of the content that is being removed or changed in the game. There will be more drastic alterations that do affect gameplay, but these will only appear in a separate region-locked build.

As reported by PC Gamer, Rainbow Six Siege has been hit with almost 2000 negative reviews over the last few days, the vast majority of which are related to the changes. This has caused the game’s rating to fall to ‘Mixed’ on Steam.

A lot of the anger is coming from the game’s official subreddit, where posts calling out Ubisoft for seemingly kowtowing to Chinese demands are being upvoted. “By adhering to Chinese censorship they are cooperating with a dictatorship. Like wtf Ubi you can't do this sh*t! This against what the West stands for!” wrote Reddit user Zarvoth. One player went so far as to destroy his physical copy of the game in protest.

Some Rainbow Six Siege players, including a few members of eSports teams, have said that people shouldn’t focus on these changes, which they claim are almost unnoticeable, but it seems like they’re in the minority when it comes to this issue.

Happy about these changes, allowing for more culture diversity as well as exposing the game to more people ( China ) and facing the fact that its EASIER to run 1 game client than two, good job Ubi. https://t.co/g69O9yMYYr

— G2 Pengu (@G2Pengu) 2 November 2018

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https://www.techspot.com/news/77272-rainbow-six-siege-gets-review-bombed-after-chinese.html

 

[BSim500]

"Slot machines, skulls, dagger icons, and blood splatter are just some of the content that is being removed or changed in the game"

I agree with the review bombers, those are absolutely ridiculous extreme levels of censorship. "The Ministry of Correct Thought (tm) says let's ban every game with a skull in it". OK, so I guess that includes Baldur's Gate's, Grim Fandango & Monkey Island before we even begin to look at FPS's / horror genres? Can't have Thief or Dishonored (too many daggers). Can't have Fallout: New Vegas (slot machines). Can't have blood (at least 50% of the 20,000 games ever made on PC).

What's truly ironic is if Tom Clancy were alive today he probably wouldn't sell Ubisoft the rights to use his name / Rainbow Six IP given "taking no sh*t from terrorists / Communists" was the central running theme of his books in the first place... The whole "Ubisoft are now making the exact polar opposite of what the guy authored" is like watching someone pay E. L. James for the rights to make "50 Shades..." movies, and then partnering with someone who insists they all be turned into pious family-friendly made-for-children Disney drama's that don't mention sex at all...

Edit: I wonder what the response would be if Ubisoft suggested turning Tom Clancy's The Bear and The Dragon into a joint-Chinese venture.

 

[Fobus]

There is an inherent contradiction, even hypocrisy in protesting this: "it does not affect us, but we will try to affect you". Protesting non-democratic goverments is one thing, but over a couple of icons in a video game...

It's not something like a search engine, that's vital in using the internet, and could massively affect the behaviour of the people.

 

[texasrattler]

Changing a game even if it's more minor for one country ( China) is simply ridiculous. This is being done because Ubisoft saw what Pubg numbers were like (game is mostly made up of Chinese players).

What's really funny this game isn't even on Steam, even if it is sold there, you have to use Uplay anyways. So in the end I highly doubt some Steam reviews matter much since the game isn't actually played with Steam.
Reddit is different as that's the main forum most use for this game.

No one wants China involved in games. To many problems and changes to games. Ubi wants it cause it wants money from them. While I get you want to make money but you risk alienating your player base and possibly have players leave as they don't want China involved or play with any of it's players.

 

[Capaill]

"These cosmetic changes will apply globally as this means less work than maintaining dual builds."
"There will be more drastic alterations that do affect gameplay, but these will only appear in a separate region-locked build"
Que?

I also like someone's comment that they removed gambling machines but left in loot boxes.

 

[DubiousFishHook]

First boycott that isn't cringeworthy, n1.

 

[Evernessince]

I doubt this will have any negative impact on sales. After all, the Chinese aren't using the english version of steam and they've already gotten a majority of english sales. But yeah, if they were hoping to foster a player base for their online game they are doing a poor job at doing it.

 

[Nobina]

When CSGO released in China it had it's own version with blood and skulls removed. This is just Ubisoft being lazy and greedy as usual, those *****.