Rainbow Six Siege X is live, and it's already sparked a surge for Ubisoft's FPS

It's been nearly a decade since Ubisoft first launched Rainbow Six Siege. In the time since, the multiplayer FPS has improved enormously, attracting a devoted audience and cementing itself as one of the best options in a genre that also includes PUBG, Valorant, and Marvel Rivals. To keep that momentum going into its tenth year and beyond, Ubisoft has put out a sweeping overhaul of Siege with today's launch of Rainbow Six Siege X. Even though it's only been out for a few hours, this decision seems to have been a good one, as the game's already attracted a massive player base and strong reviews on Steam.

Rainbow Six Siege X takes the long-running FPS game's foundation and revitalizes it with a number of changes. Most immediately noticeable is a rework of its visuals, applied to five maps at the time of launch, and tweaks to the core design of the game, including the ability to shoot and destroy objects like pipes and fire extinguishers. The relaunch also offers a new 6v6 mode called Dual Front and allows previous Siege players to carry over their progress, receive rewards based on how long they've been playing, and keep their ability to get into modes from before X launched.

So far, Siege X is going over well with players. Not only have its user reviews shot upward in the hours since launch, but it's also hit its highest player count in more than a year. At the time of writing, the game has 134,366 active players, down from a 24-hour peak of 142,025 earlier today. That 24-hour peak represents the most active players since April, 2024, which reached 156,080.

Rainbow Six Siege X is out now. You can download it for free on Steam right here.

Or, you can find more like it to play with our picks for the best co-op games and best multiplayer games on PC.

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