Rainbow Six Mobile returns with Season Ice Storm ending a near eight-month hiatus

• Ubisoft’s Rainbow Six Mobile has entered its first of three phases on its way to global launch

Ubisoft’s Rainbow Six Mobile has returned to soft launch with major overhauls to its game modes, in-game economies and progression system.

Known as Season Ice Storm, this revamp launched on November 12th and marked the end of an almost eight-month hiatus.

The update has commenced phase one of the game’s return, dubbed the "technical test." This is the first of three phases on Rainbow Six Mobile’s journey to global launch.

Back in action

Content updates to Rainbow Six Mobile were paused this March so that the dev team could focus on addressing issues, improving performance, creating new content and more. The developers also paused the game’s rollout to new regions and closed servers outside of soft launch countries.

Countries included in the soft launch, such as Canada, Mexico and Columbia, maintained access throughout the pause. According to AppMagic estimates, they spent approximately $18,000 in-game during that time despite having no new content to play.

With the launch of Season Ice Storm, returning players have plenty of updates and overhauls to explore, such as the new game mode Bomb Rush, which emphasises quicker gameplay and less downtime.

The mode has shorter matchmaking, a shorter preparation phase and quicker objective reveals than were previously seen in-game.

A training area has also been created to welcome newcomers and provide a space for them to familiarise themselves with gameplay mechanics. The team developed a practice mode as a "safe space" for players to roam the map freely and strategise without a timer or enemies present.

Entering the economy

Changes to in-game economies have also been implemented, with the previous ticket pack system now entirely removed and replaced by renown. The currency is rewarded through playing matches, completing challenges and progressing through the battle pass, and can be exchanged for new playable characters of varying cost.

Those who played before the update have had their ticket packs automatically converted into a corresponding amount of renown.

The dev team has also added new features to encourage user retention, such as daily missions rewarding Silver Bullets - used to obtain free, random cosmetics. The new Boot Camp, meanwhile, is a progression system designed to tease upcoming rewards for playing more matches - granting cosmetics, playable characters and more Silver Bullets.

Daily player spending spiked by 192% upon Season Ice Storm’s launch, but overall spending has remained low during this first face of the game’s renewed soft launch. It generated just $267 on its day of return and has earned almost $3,000 in gross player spending over the three weeks since.

For now, the dev team’s priorities are on monitoring fan reception to the new features while responding to crashes and other issues. Expanding Rainbow Six Mobile’s playerbase and engagement with new features will come during Phase two, before final balancing and data centre deployment in the eventual Phase 3.

"Over the past few months, the Rainbow Six Mobile dev team has focused its efforts on enhancing key elements of the game based on community feedback to deliver the best possible R6 experience on mobile to our players," the dev team said.

"We are looking forward to your feedback on these changes as it helps us continue to adjust the game and improve it over time."