Rainbow Six Siege players frustrated with Ubisoft "virtue signaling"

The Rainbow Six Siege community is fed up with Ubisoft's behavior following Russia's invasion of Ukraine. 

Ubisoft initially announced that the company would be supporting Ukraine by donating to various causes that help families in need. The publisher also vowed to support employees from Ukraine by offering housing and financial aid. This was applauded by Rainbow Six players — but then Ubisoft continued to add to the blog post. 

"In light of the ongoing tragedy in Ukraine, we have decided to suspend our sales in Russia," Ubisoft wrote. 

This didn't elicit a large response from the Rainbow Six Siege community, although there were murmurs that taking video games away from Russian citizens wasn't really something impactful that needed to happen. 

Then Ubisoft quietly removed the bios for Russian operators on the official website. The profiles remain but these operators no longer have biographies. This is most likely due to some Russian operators having a history in Ukraine, which may hit too close to home for some players. 

This was a change that many Rainbow Six Siege players reacted negatively to. Many called it "virtue signaling" on Reddit. Others joked that deleting the bios ended the war and defeated Russia, essentially joking that the deleted bios were unnecessary. 

Despite the backlash from outspoken players, Ubisoft decided to also make changes to the esports scene. Russian players would still be allowed to play but they would have to compete under a "neutral banner." This meant that Russian orgs would also have their bundles removed from the game. 

This led to another frenzy of frustration from Rainbow Six players. Some expressed relief that they already purchased the bundles. But others made similar sentiments to earlier updates, stating that this was "not helping" the actual situation. 

The Rainbow Six Siege community has clearly had enough of Ubisoft's decisions to impact in-game features due to the ongoing crisis in Europe. While some may be silently applauding Ubisoft for supporting Ukraine so openly, the outspoken portion of the community is not impressed.