Rainbow Six: Siege and its issues with ‘Ember Rise’ Skins

Nuisance has been created in the competitive scene of Rainbow Six: Siege regarding a certain 'Pay-to-Win' Skins Collection

The Problem:

Rainbow: Six Siege offers the player base to purchase operator skins with real money. The motto behind the operator skins is to provide a cosmetic overhaul over the basic skins of the operator. Usually, in any competitive game, cosmetics have little to no effect on the gameplay experience as it should be. But such was not the case with a specific skin collection named ‘Ember Rise’. These operator skins sported outfits of mostly khaki colours.

This contributed towards a major issue of visibility of such operators sporting ‘Ember Rise’ skins. The skin enabled the operators to be completely camouflaged if they were present in a level area of a similar colour. The issue was undeniably giving an upper hand to players who sported these skins, with the ability to blend in with their surroundings and make them extremely hard to spot. In a competitive game, where 1 bullet shot at the enemy operator’s head from any gun can result in a kill, this was a severe issue, especially in professional e-sports leagues.

The following image is an example of the severity of the problem. To add injury to insult, these skins can only be purchased with real money. One cannot use in-game currency to obtain these skins. This ultimately gave rise to the discussion of the ‘Pay to Win’ problem. A concept where one can spend real money to obtain an unfair advantage in-game compared to others who don’t spend money in-game.

The Solution:

Provide an option to the player base to completely toggle off these custom skins and instead only show all operators sporting their default skins. Providing an option to the players gives everyone a fair chance and provides an even playing ground competitively. This will ensure that people who have spent money for skins don’t make it completely invalid as well as not causing visibility issues to others. In competitive leagues, where players play professionally, all of the skins should be disabled altogether for the duration of the tournament. When all sides of the game are fairly balanced, it provides for a great gameplay experience and even greater audience viewership experience.