Rainbow Six Siege Isn’t Getting A Sequel Or A Remake Because It Just Won’t Be The Same

Rainbow Six Siege is turning nine years old this year. Naturally, the question on everyone’s minds is when bwork will start on a sequel, especially with the team-based shooter’s aging Anvil engine. Unfortunately, the answer is never. It’s not because the game isn’t popular, but because the team doesn’t want to risk ruining something that’s already working by porting everything over to a different engine.

“The idea of switching engines to something that can be off-the-shelf ready simply doesn't answer the needs of a really competitive and demanding game like Siege,” creative director Alexander Karpazis told PCGamer. “I’m not going to name names, but you see games that did go through sequels and just completely drop the ball because they have to remake every single thing that they did in that first game.”

Karpazis adds that it’s impossible to make it exactly the same way, much like redoing your homework from scratch without the original as a guide. “It can be really frustrating, really costly, and in the end, it doesn't even give you anything that was a benefit,” he says. “If you know what you have to begin with, and you build it up, that is where we see success. And that is where we know we can take Siege into the future.”

Instead of remaking everything on a more modern game engine, the developers seem to be content with slowly but steadily improving the game on Anvil. Since Rainbow Six Siege launched in 2015, they’ve reworked, overhauled, replaced, and tweaked everything from its operators, maps, and combat mechanics to its game modes, gameplay rules, and user interface. So much so, that it’s now a completely different game from the one that launched nine years ago and Karpazis is confident that it’s got more years ahead of it.

“We really do know that this is a game that can last forever with the people and the talent and the tools that we have today,” he said.