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Ubisoft reverses course on Rainbow Six Siege “aesthetic changes”

Changes to Rainbow Six Siege's aesthetics, which fans decried as censorship, are now being undone.

Ubisoft is reversing all aesthetic changes made to Rainbow Six Siege as part of a plan to comply with local censors in Asian territories, the company announced today. The plan had been to strip out ambient references to sex, gambling, drugs, and death, and it was met with strong opposition by the community over social media.

“We have spent the last week working on solutions and have decided that we will be reverting all aesthetic changes,” the Rainbow Six Team said in a post to the official site today.

Those changes, which removed things like slot machines and suggestive neon signs from maps and changed certain icons in the game menus, were meant to facilitate a “single, global” version of the game client for all territories, including Asian countries where local decency laws prohibit depictions of certain vices and violence.

Now, however, all those changes are being undone, following widespread community outcry, with many players threatening on Reddit to give up playing Rainbow Six Siege entirely if the changes were implemented.

In the blog post today, Ubisoft said aesthetic changes that have been made will begin being rolled back alongside the launch of Wind Bastion, Siege’s latest Operation. The team says it will be working to remove all the changes as quickly as possible, but not all of that may happen at once.
The team said it’s working to keep impact on players to a minimum, but that the work could cause a light delay in the launch of the next season of Siege.

“We have been following the conversation with our community closely over the past couple of weeks, alongside regular discussions with our internal Ubisoft team, and we want to ensure that the experience for all our players, especially those that have been with us from the beginning, remains as true to the original artistic intent as possible,” the team wrote.

As for Siege fans in Asia, Ubisoft says current players will be able to continue playing the game.

Operation Wind Bastion hits the PC test servers later today.