'Rainbow Six Siege' News: Ubisoft Updates Infamous Starter Edition

By Kevin Reyes, Christian Post Contributor Friday, March 02, 2018

To celebrate its third year of active service, Ubisoft has announced that they are making major changes to both the Standard and Starter Editions of "Rainbow Six: Siege" that, hopefully, will draw in more players and make the infamous Starter Edition seem more appealing.

In a new post on their website, Ubisoft states that after the launch of Year Three on March 6, anyone that purchases the Starter Edition will receive six random operators, an improvement over the previous iteration that only rewarded two operators and 600 credits. These six operators will include three Attackers and three Defenders. The possible operators are Ash, Thermite, Thatcher, Fuze, Sledge, Rook, Mute, Smoke, Jager, and Kapkan.

For those who are not familiar, the Starter Edition of "Rainbow Six: Siege" is basically a much cheaper version of the full game that comes with certain quirks to compensate for the lower cost of entry.

At a price of just $14.99, the Starter Edition is less than half of what the game would normally cost, but players will be paying the price in another way. Normally, an operator costs 2,000 Renown, the in-game currency, but with the Starter Edition, each new operator will cost a whopping 12,500 Renown. Ubisoft estimates that it will take about 15 hours to gain that much Renown.

Now the new system does not really circumvent this major issue, but it does enable newcomers to have a larger pool of playable characters than before.

In addition to these changes to the Starter Edition, the Standard Editions are getting their own updates as well. Beginning with the launch of Operation Chimera on March 6, Ubisoft will remove the Renown cost for the first 20 operators that the game launched with for all players other than those that own the Starter Edition. On top of that, they will be removing the Renown cost for all weapon attachment for both available and upcoming operators.

At the time of this writing, "Rainbow Six: Siege" currently has 36 operators with eight more scheduled to be released this year. Ubisoft has previously announced that they want to aim for 100 operators by the end of the game's life span, so making the first 20 operators essentially bundled with the game is a great way to not scare away newcomers that may be daunted by the sheer number of locked characters.

"Rainbow Six: Siege" is available now on PC, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One. Its third year of content launches with Operation Chimera on March 6.