Rainbow Six: Siege NA League
It’s new and improved—I guess?
2020’s been one hectic year for everyone, esports included. As an org focused on Rainbow Six: Siege, the announcement of the new NA League caught our attention and is something we’re still grasping at. What is it, what’s to come, and where’s all this going? What Ubisoft’s end game, and what’s the future of esports look like?
The future of Siege is here.
And it sure is confusing, if nothing else.
What was once a simple Pro League (PL) and Challengers League (CL) co-run by Ubisoft and ESL with a bunch of majors and minors scattered around similarly run by independent groups with the blessing of Ubisoft has turned into a highly segmented PL and CL broken into divisions, stages, and groups with quarterly majors. I don’t care how you parse it, the simple has been sacrificed for the complex without obvious reasons for this. And unfortunately, there’s no simple way to explain the intricacies of how the new PL and CL will work because they’re so divisioned, but a high-level understanding is still possible—and really does help in understanding all this.
Ok, so the simplest entry point is with the 3 scenes at work here—global Siege, the NA pros, and the NA semi-pros.
Global Siege consists of the APAC, EU, LATAM, and NA scenes, with each of these having their own regional structures. Because all these scenes must interact at some point to keep global Siege unified, majors and minors will continue to exist as before, and these will serve as the great global unifier.
At the pro level, NA PL will be renamed the NA League and will be broken up into the US Division and Canada Division. US Division will have 8 teams while Canada will only have 4. These teams will compete in their divisions over the course of the season until the NA Finals, at which point teams will be selected to compete at the Six Invitational based on Global Standings Points.
At the semi-pro level, NA CL will be broken up into national divisions like PL but with a major twist. Where CL before this change was a one-time league of 8 teams that happened annually and allowed the winner to be promoted to PL, the new CL will be broken into three stages with 32 teams competing for a chance to oust the bottom-ranking PL team at the NA Finals, with the chance for new teams to enter into CL along the way.
Only change is certain.
Now on the face of it, this system is actually a major improvement from the single season of yore. But what this revamp really does is secure Ubisoft’s control over the scene and allow them to sow the seeds to organically develop the scene towards a franchisement model. Let me explain.
For all the semi-pro orgs and orgless teams with blind CL ambitions, congratulations! The world’s your oyster! By reinforcing this constant churn of teams through CL with the promise of a spot in PL if you just work had enough, Ubisoft has ingeniously crafted a league where the semi-pro scene is subservient by choice to their franchisement ambitions. 32 teams is certainly much bigger than 8, so have at it! Maybe you’ll win.
Before when a team wanted to enter PL, they could do so only if they were the best of but 8 teams. What this meant within the semi-pro scene is that dozens of leagues and tournaments emerged to address the gap in the market for a competitive environment for all those semi-pro teams that just didn’t make it this year. The informal semi-pro scene also served as a hunting ground for that special group that could actually make it to CL, and this fueled interest in the grassroots scene and its success. With the new CL, the informal scene is sucked dry by the loss of 32 teams and orgs for a whole year, though very few of these could actually stand a chance against the pros.
But what’s the problem?
It’s Ubisoft’s game after all, right? Why should the informal scene feel entitled to holding competitions and running leagues?
Well that surely is one way to look at it—and you wouldn’t be wholly wrong for thinking this. Ubisoft does in fact own the game, and we’re all spectators to the show they’re producing. But at the end of the day, isn’t Siege just as much our game as it is theirs? Yes they might develop and publish it, but we’re the ones who spend the money and time to play the damn thing!
All this is is a move by Ubisoft to regain control over the informal scene to move forward with its franchisement ambitions with minimal grassroots resistance (which anyone with eyes can see would be raging should Ubisoft announce fanchisement today…).
Well that’s just ridiculous!
There’s still a meritocratic pipeline to get to the pros. And you’re right. There is. But how exactly did the pros get to where they are today? Was it by some competition or by the previous season’s standings?
No. It was by invitation.
Are the teams currently in PL notably pro teams supported by longstanding pro orgs? No. They’re semi-pro teams supported by longstanding semi-pro orgs, with some notable exceptions.
Well that’s good right? Upward mobility and all that, right?!
Maybe. Or maybe Ubisoft wants you to think that so you’ll be ever more swayed by their ploys to franchise that you’ll buy into this new system hand over fist and won’t question it when they actually franchise. By inviting longstanding, well loved, top tier semi-pro teams from longstanding, well loved, top tier semi-pro orgs, maybe Ubisoft wants to convince you that they actually care about the community just long enough to franchise without much fuss. Or maybe I’m insane—who knows? Make up your own mind.
I’m not here to tell you what to think.
Quite frankly, believe whatever you want to get through the day. But I believe that if you take a nice hard look at everything around you, you’ll see this for what it is—Ubisoft’s attempt to franchise in a grassroots community averse to franchisement. So much will have been lost if Ubisoft franchises. All the time and effort we’ve put in to making the informal scene work for everyone in it while Ubisoft focused on the pros will be erased in a minute just so Ubisoft can make bank on franchisement.
It is the developers who’ve slaved away at this game that deserve the rewards of the game’s success, not Ubisoft. It is the informal, grassroots community that deserves ultimate deference on matters of competitive landscape, not Ubisoft, for it is the informal, grassroots community that props up this game and its competitive scene—not Ubisoft nor the Big Money VCs waiting to buy it all up at the first chance to do so.
Take this as a warning, take this as a call to action, take this as insane ramblings—but don’t take it lying down. The future of esports is unfolding before your eyes. Don’t be disillusioned by the Big Money to let them take from you what’s yours.
~eliot, Managing Partner for Business and Strategy
