Updated on 11-26-2015 by Gabe Gurwin: As of noon EST on Thursday, the open beta for Rainbow Six Siege has finally begun.
True “beta” tests of games don’t take place days before their release date, and high-profile releases like Halo 5: Guardians have run open beta periods months ahead of time to iron out bugs and rebalance gameplay. Rainbow Six Siege is not one of those games, as Ubisoft planned to start its open beta just a week before the multiplayer shooter hit shelves. Unfortunately, ongoing connection issues are making this impossible.
In a statement on the Rainbow Six forums, Ubisoft community manager Ubi_Jax announced that due to ongoing disconnection and matchmaking issues in the Rainbow Six Siege closed beta, the open beta is being postponed “until a later time.” As of this writing, the game is scheduled to come out in about five days, which would make this one of the shortest open beta periods in history.
Luckily, the “root issue” with connections, which Ubisoft says was introduced while fixing a separate part of the game, has been identified and the team is working to rectify it. It affects all platforms, but, naturally, the publisher is confident that “the launch will not be impacted by this issue.”
While Ubisoft’s track record for online games doesn’t have the same stain as EA and Battlefield 4, the company has still had its share of rocky launches over the years. Ghost Recon: Future Soldier was marred with lag issues at launch, while the much-publicized disaster that was Assassin’s Creed Unity led to a steep decrease in sales of this year’s entry in the series, Assassin’s Creed Syndicate. As such, you might want to consider waiting a few days before picking up Rainbow Six Siege. With Ubisoft’s plan for content to support the game throughout 2016, there should be plenty of players for months to come.
Rainbow Six Siege launches on December 1 for Xbox One, PlayStation 4, and PC.
