Another live-service game is openly planning around Grand Theft Auto VI, but this one is not running from it. Rainbow Six Siege creative director Joshua Mills said in a recent interview that GTA 6's November launch will dent player counts across the industry, Siege included, with the plan being to ride it out rather than panic.
Mills was matter-of-fact about it. Something huge is coming with a new Grand Theft Auto this year, he said, so players will go and play it, including the Siege team themselves. Many will come back afterward, so any dip is temporary, or at least that's what he thinks. He explains that his main concern isn't the drop in players but the reaction to it. The goal is keeping the team and management calm so a short-term slump doesn't leave anyone anxious.
His plan for the GTA 6 window has a golden rule. Treat the players who stick with Siege "like kings and queens." The team will not ease off or take a break just because a rival is dominating the market. Instead, they will keep the content coming and reward the loyal players who spend the launch period in Siege.
Season 4 is timed to arrive around then, with some unannounced surprises held back, so they're incentivising people who'd rather play Siege than spend time in Vice City and Leonida, which is easier said than done.
How the industry is planning around GTA 6
Who | Their approach |
|---|---|
Rival studios | Avoiding November so they don't compete |
Twitch | Expecting a huge viewer influx, then more when online launches |
Rainbow Six Siege | Staying put and rewarding loyal players through the dip |
Nintendo | The one big game launching near it anyway |
Different games and platforms are planning around GTA 6 in very different ways.
Siege's approach runs opposite to most of the industry. Where rival studios have spent months avoiding November entirely to dodge GTA 6, Siege is planting its flag and staying, similar to what Nintendo and Devolver Digital are doing. Twitch's CEO expects a huge viewer wave to GTA 6 and called its pull an "attention vortex." Siege's bet is that the players who do not leave are worth more than the ones who do, at least for a few weeks.
It is one more sign of how much GTA 6 is bending the industry around itself before it even ships. Publishers are rescheduling. Streamers are bracing for a flood. Even NBA players are joking about the fallout. Now a major shooter is building a whole loyalty strategy around surviving the launch. Everyone is planning for the same November, just in different ways.
With that said, Mills is probably right that the dip will be temporary. GTA 6 is a single-player game. It isn't a direct competition to Siege, at least not until the next iteration of Grand Theft Auto Online arrives, which won't be for a while. So Siege players will most likely drift back once the novelty settles. However, the fact that a studio is drawing up battle plans months ahead says everything about the size of what is coming on November 19.