The Six Invitational hype has faded away: Rainbow Six Siege lost a third of its players on Steam in May

_{Note: All of the statistics used in this article display the game's reality on Steam, which doesn't include the player count from either PlayStation or Xbox.}

The Six Invitational 2024 played in São Paulo, Brazil, left us with some of the greatest memories and pictures from a Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six Siege crowd.

The hype brought by not just the players but also Ubisoft's developers, combined with the streaming numbers collected thanks to co-streaming partnerships with Jynxzi and Shroud, saw the Six Invitational 2024 producing the greatest viewer numbers from any Rainbow Six Siege professional competition.

Ubisoft's success in Brazil quickly translated to more players being interested in Rainbow Six Siege's evolution. While new players would install the game for the first time, others would give Ubisoft's shooter a second (or even third) chance.

On Match 5, only two weeks after the conclusion of the Six Invitational 2024, Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six Siege averaged its highest player peak on Steam in almost three years. Two weeks later, Rainbow Six Siege saw 200,000 players playing the game simultaneously for the first time.

Unfortunately, Ubisoft couldn't keep the growth for much longer. While March 2024 averaged 105,825 players according to SteamCharts, April 2024 saw its first player drop since November 2023 as the game averaged 91,493 players.

However, the biggest player loss was yet to come. In May 2024, the title only averaged 60,580 players and had a player peak of 100,331, which was seen at the start of the month, on May 5.

Here's a basic comparison between March's and May's playing numbers, according to SteamCharts:

	March	May
Average Players	105,825	60,580
Gain	48,2561	-45,244
Gain (%)	83,821	-42,75
Player Peak	200,476	100,331

¹_{Compared to February}

These numbers look underwhelming and it's fair to say Ubisoft couldn't keep the wave of players brought back to the game with the Six Invitational 2025 hype.

However, the truth is that, with the numbers having stabilized, May's numbers are an improvement from January's statistics, with January averaging 50,275 monthly players. The difference is even bigger when comparing May 2024 with May 2023, when Ubisoft's shooter averaged 40,341 monthly players.

The higher you climb, the harder you fall. Nobody should have expected Ubisoft to keep the Six Invitational 2024 alive. With Year 9 being a transition to what's to come in Year 10, the first months of Siege's Year 9 should be seen as a good step forward.

Why has Rainbow Six Siege been losing players again?

Despite how badly this drop looks, it was to be expected. Only unreal improvements could have kept such a volume of players in the game. The ongoing cheater crisis or the lack of brand-new operators in Year 9 are some reasons that could explain the game's first loss of players since November 2023.

Former G2 Esports analyst and current desk analyst for Rainbow Six Siege Jack "Fresh" Allen recently admitted he is "taking a break from Siege until the cheater situation is resolved." This is just one of the most recent examples of highly respected personalities in the community complaining about how bad the cheater situation is in Siege right now.

Although players keep complaining about cheaters in the game, Ubisoft unveiled improvements at Operation New Blood's panel in Manchester, England. According to Ubisoft Montreal's Creative Director, Alexander Karpazis, the team made a "seven-times improvement to the number of data points we used to make bans, this also means we increased our ban rate by 60% in the last season and we have seen a huge reduction in cheaters and especially rage cheats."

Another reason that could explain the drop in players seen in the last two months could be the uncertainty seen in this year's roadmap. Instead of focusing on the creation of new content, Ubisoft decided to use Year 9 to reshape the game's current features.

Therefore, Year 9 will only have two new operators, while two operators who are already in the game will be remastered. In Operation Deadly Omen, we saw the arrival of Deimos. Meanwhile, with Operation New Blood, we will see the rework of Recruit, as Sentry and Striker will replace the operator.

With the planned launch of Siege's Membership, the full release of Marketplace, and the Reputation System, Ubisoft is focusing on improving rather than releasing. However, players expect Ubisoft to do both at the same time, and that seems impossible.

When is the next Rainbow Six Siege season?

Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six Siege upcoming season Operation New Blood will be launched in June 2024.

With the release of Operation New Blood, we expect Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six Siege's numbers to experience an increase between June and July. However, with Siege's professional off-season being just around the corner, the hype could go down quicker than expected.

Looking at SteamChart's numbers, the number of players in Steam didn't stop increasing from June to September, potentially thanks to European and American schools breaking up in June for summer. Will we have the same increase in the upcoming months?