‘Rainbow Six Siege’ Free To Play On Xbox One And PC This Weekend, Starting Today

If you have an interest in Rainbow Six Siege, but have never pulled the trigger on Ubisoft’s tactical shooter, now is your chance to try it out for free. The publisher announced the game will be available to download and play for free this weekend on the Xbox One and PC starting today.

Rainbow Six Siege will be available to play for free on the PC from 1 p.m. ET Thursday, July 28 through Monday, August 1 at the same time. PC gamers will need to download the Uplay app from the Ubisoft’s app official site. Once installed, the game can be downloaded and installed from there.

Xbox One owners that want to try the Rainbow Six Siege out can head to the Xbox Store on their console now to download it and install it as part of Microsoft’s Xbox Live Gold’s Free Play Days promotion. It became available for free 3 am ET / 12 am PT this morning and will remain so through the same time Monday, August 1. Unfortunately, it does not appear to be available to download via the Xbox Store website at this time.

Additionally, Ubisoft is offering the Gold and Standard editions of the game for 50 percent off through Sunday. The Standard Edition can be purchased for $30 while the Gold Edition is available for $45. The Gold Edition comes with the Rainbow Six Siege Season Pass along with some bonus weapon skins, a permanent 5 percent XP boost, and two extra Daily Challenges.

This all leads into the Operation Skull Rain update scheduled to release on Tuesday, August 2. The update brings a number of quality of life improvements to Ubisoft’s shooter along with a brand new map set in the favelas on the outskirts of Rio de Janeiro.

The quality of life improvements including giving TDM-Bomb the ability to specify who spawns with the diffuser. Minor UI improvements are included for navigating menus and the “N” mark on the compass is now highlighted in red to provide players with better visibility on the direction they are headed. You can check out the full detail of the quality of life improvements in this post from the game’s blog.

Ubisoft will also be performing some maintenance on Rainbow Six Siege to fix outstanding issues with the game such as animation clipping, replay system, exploitable glitches, and anti-cheat. The anti-cheat angle includes integrating the BattlEye anti-cheat software into the game to block those players willing to win at any cost.

“This cheating countermeasure is at the heart our Health Program. BattlEye is a client-side anti-cheating system that prevents players from loading the game when detecting cheats. We’ll soon be in position to share the exact launch of the preliminary integration of BattlEye (Beta),” the developers wrote in the game’s official blog.

The new “Favela” map brings an interesting new twist to Rainbow Six Siege. Players have become accustomed to building defenses and tearing down the defenses setup by the opposing team. Ubisoft is attempting to force players to be more mobile by providing the ability to break through any exterior wall.

“To reproduce the feeling that ‘no place is safe,’ we implemented a new technique: the exterior shell destruction. In Favela, the main buildings are destructible from the outside, which requires a new assessment as to how vulnerable you are where you are standing,” the developers explained in a blog post about the map.

“Favela will feature both day and nighttime versions of the map with the ability to fight in close-quarters indoors with opportunities to take the fight outside on the rooftops.

Will you try Rainbow Six Siege during the free weekend? Sound off in the comments below.

[Image via Ubisoft]