R6 Esports 2023: Who’s leaving and why?

Multiple organizations are leaving the Rainbow Six Siege competitive scene and the list is getting bigger day by day. Yesterday it was Astralis’ turn to announce they’re stepping down from the scene, even following a 4th place in Montreal at the Six Invitational.

While we saw many teams waiting for those details and for more information due to the drastic changes that Ubisoft announced to the worldwide competitive scene, we’ll have to wait to see if they will return or not.

Who’s leaving?

Let’s get the details from the organizations officially and what they say about that exit. Mentioned before, Astralis says “we have turned every stone to find a way to continue operations. This includes an open and constructive dialogue with Ubisoft, during which all parties were looking for possible ways to move forward.” Although, the Danish team adds: “(…) unfortunately, we did not find a solution where we could continue operations while meeting our obligations and standards regarding working conditions for our staff and players”.

Read more: Nicolas Estrup of BLAST: “We feel strongly that we can bring something fresh to R6 while understanding its legacy and past”

In NA the situation seems a bit worse. Compared to the teams that started the first stage of the 2022 season, only four of the five organizations currently have a roster. Former Six Invitational champion, TSM also stopped operations in the game.

Aaron “Gotcha” Chung gave his thoughts about many organizations in North America are leaving the scene: “Siege in particular and esports in general is just not stable as a long-term career option. Have a backup plan! 5/10 NAL teams, in 1 stage, have either dropped their entire roster or exited Siege with more orgs to potentially follow”.

Another huge player in the FPS market is FURIA. The exit by the Brazilian organization was justified by the CEO via TwitLonger. According to Jaime Padua, FURIA left the scene based on some points: “In the title it is still difficult to generate income in a way that is worthwhile to sustain the conditions that we want to offer to athletes and the community. And being realistic, there is even an extreme goodwill of the Brazilian team at Ubisoft to make this happen, however I don’t feel the same international support.”

Image Credit: Ubisoft / @capturedbycyga

The CEO still criticizes the way the ecosystem is treated “The effort we see from the passionate fans of R6 and the tireless members of the media and general communication, does not reflect in long term support and solutions for them, and then everyone ends up getting discouraged at some point. There is a lack of an effective commander for the scenario and therefore unfortunately in R6 this synergy has not yet happened.”

Why the organizations are leaving?

Most of the teams leaving claim lack of perspective from Ubisoft and lack of information from the publisher about the leagues and lower tiers in the competitive scene. Today, BLAST and Ubisoft revealed all the details that were clearly missing for organizations to structure Siege operations.

As claimed by some people above, and mentioned as confirmed by some organizations, the benefit in the relation of operation cost, revenue and brand exposure is way lower for R6 nowadays compared to other esports titles. The viewership in the game is also declining; comparing it to the on going VALORANT LOCK//IN in São Paulo, Brazil, the viewership was close to reaching the numbers of the VALORANT’s tournament. But the São Paulo LOCK//IN is currently ongoing (ending on March 4,) yet even at its halfway mark the numbers were still higher than the biggest tournament in the year for Siege.

Following this and investment loss and brand deals collapsing with some organizations, it seems the “perfect scenario” for the teams to put a stop to their Siege operations.

Adaptation time for LATAM and APAC

Talking specifically about the situation in LATAM and APAC, we saw a lot of organizations disbanding their rosters at the end of the last year and the beginning of 2023. Most of them were waiting for more details in the regional leagues to be announced. Gaimin Gladiators was a proof of that: “Regrettably, effective immediately we are releasing the roster due to lack of info from Ubisoft. We’ll postpone our investment in R6 until we have the necessary info to move forward.”

Since Ubisoft is executing big changes in these two regions, we’ll have to see what the process to select the teams attending the new leagues will be. Mexico, Argentina and the other South American countries will currently have a league called Hispanic Latin America. While in Asia there will be leagues for South Korea, Japan and Asia. We’ll have to wait how those leagues will be composed and by which organizations.

Stay tuned to BLIX.GG for further developments surrounding R6, as well as all the latest esports news.