Good News For Indian Players As Rainbow Six Siege Esports Expands to South Asia in 2020

Cover and thumbnail via @Rainbow Six Siege Esports

At the recently concluded Rainbow Six Siege Invitational 2020 Finals, Ubisoft announced plans for the upcoming seasons, which includes Year 5 and Year 6 for the title. As is customary for the title, the developers and the team behind the game reveal the future plans for the title at Siege’s premier event including a host of new content, map reworks and how the esport ecosystem will function. 

While North America’s Spacestation Gaming were crowned champions, taking home a whopping 1 Million USD, it seemed as if the tournament was the start of a new beginning for Siege rather than the end of a season. With a revamped esports structure, there now lies more opportunity with more teams and more regions to be a part of the ecosystem sustainable. Coupled with Ubisoft’s revenue sharing model with organizations and their consistent efforts at empowering content creators, the entire system has been built on some very solid foundation and is getting more and more popular by the day.

R6 caster and personality, Parker Mackay was upbeat for the R6 Siege opportunities in India

One such region which has seen increased traction over the months, has been South Asia and India in particular. The recent addition of the title as a regular feature in ESL India tournaments saw a good response from the community not just in the region but internationally as well. The developers themselves recognized the popularity of the title in the region and introduced an Indian operator by the name of Kali as a playable character just last year.

As per the announcement, the esports ecosystem for Rainbow Six Siege will focus on individual regions and teams try and build rivalries and narratives within these regions. Teams from different regions will then meet at international events, to make for a gala showdown between the best squads. For now the regions will be Europe, North America, Latin America and Asia-Pacific. Within this APAC will have two subdivisions. The North APAC region will include Japan, South Korea and Southeast Asia while the South APAC region will include Oceania and South Asia. 

This is the first time the South Asia region will be included as part of APAC in the Rainbow Six Siege ecosystem and the news comes at a crucial time for South Asian Esports. The popularity of mobile titles has seen massive growth in both infrastructure and penetration and names like Fnatic have found their way into the region. With Siege’s commitment to the region, this opens up new opportunities for players and organizations with a potential slot to play in big international LAN. 

In 2019, Ubisoft added Kali to the game making her the first Indian operator to be a part of Siege | Image via @Ubisoft

With regular LANs planned and the existing Pro League, teams from all regions will now be picking up points based on their performances at various LANs. This in turn will help them qualify for the Six Invitational in 2021, which is the landmark event for the title.