The best tactical shooter on the market almost became something a lot of its community lost faith in as Ubisoft announced recently plans to alter the aesthetic design of Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six Siege for the Chinese market.

"We are currently working towards preparing Rainbow Six Siege for expansion into Asian territories," read a post on the official Ubisoft Blog that included details on changing everything from blade and skull icons in-game to removing slot machines, blood splatters, and sexual content.

The changes were planned to come with the major year 3, season 4 update as part of Operation Wind Bastion - the next content expansion which adds two new Moroccan Operators and one new map, Fortress, alongside a lengthy series of bug fixes and tweaks. Ubisoft tarnishing their artistic integrity to comply with the Chinese government wasn't seen as a positive thing for the game, brand, or developer, and the community made that known in forums, Reddit, and social media.


Nearly three weeks later and after a deafening silence from community representatives, Ubisoft has finally spoke out and changed their mind on the matter.

"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."

Changes already made for the new update will be mostly reverted right away with some taking a little longer. There's no word yet on what this means for Ubisoft's "single, global vision" idea or how the game will expand into the Chinese market where the government just cut a live broadcast of the Golden Horse Awards (the Chinese Oscars, basically) when documentary filmmaker Fu Yue asked for Taiwan to be recognized as an independent entity, and where Chinese writer Tianyi was sentenced to a decade in prison for including gay subject matter.

Ubisoft censoring the aesthetic design to conform to that seems problematic at best.

Perhaps a Chinese version of the game could be released, adding more work to Ubisoft in the long-run for updates on two different versions of the game. Either, bravo to Ubisoft or acting in response to concerns.