Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six Siege may face an impacted content release schedule as its development team begins to work from home in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic; following the lead of EA, Bungie, and other giants in the gaming industry.
Ubisoft put out a Tweet telling its fans that work-from-home policies are being implemented "in all affected regions" to protect its developers while "ensur[ing] you can keep playing." The official Twitter account for Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six Siege followed up on Thursday saying "the day-to-day play experience" will remain unchanged as its team works from home, but smaller patches in the short term will be cut.
That Tweet goes on to say that the Rainbow Six Siege team is "assessing the impact on future planned content releases," and will provide updates if any "shifts in timelines" might occur going forward. Ubisoft has indicated the multiplayer shooter will be available "day one" on next-gen consoles, the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X, but it's currently unclear whether coronavirus concerns will affect those plans as well.
The viral pandemic has had sweeping impacts on the game industry, not only forcing companies to let their employees work from home but also cancelling live events throughout the year. For instance, after the 2020 Game Developers Conference was cancelled, Sony decided to reveal the PS5 specs via a livestream. Many studios are also currently deciding how best to handle the announcements they would have made at E3 2020 without a live convention.
Other entertainment industries have also been affected. Funimation, a company known for dubbing and distributing Japanese anime, announced it will be delaying dubbed episodes of My Hero Academia and other shows as its employees make the transition to working from home.
While there are no concrete assertions as to what will or will not be affected in Rainbow Six Siege going forward, it's nice to see the development team promising to be transparent about what their players can expect as the world acclimates to the new normal of quarantines and social distancing. The game is still seeing record numbers of concurrent players on Steam despite having released in 2015, and no doubt those fans will be eagerly anticipating any news they can get.
Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six Siege is available now for PC, PS4, and Xbox One.