Before, when comparing Rainbow Six Siege with Counter-Strike, the similarities stopped at their bomb rulesets and 5v5 team sizes. However, Ubisoft is now developing its own take on a feature that has been a trademark of Valve’s tactical first-person shooter: the skin marketplace.
Just called the “Rainbow Six Siege Marketplace,” this website will let Siege gamers trade cosmetics in-game with one other. Although Ubisoft promised that the marketplace will be available on mobile and internet platforms in a press conference, the company failed to address the question of how it will integrate with either the Siege client or the Ubisoft Connect app.
You can buy packs of R6 Credits, Siege’s premium currency, in-game for $5 to $100. You’ll need them to make any purchases on the site. Cosmetics may have a defined value, but it’s not clear if players will be able to adjust prices for goods. In theory, that implies that Ubisoft’s NFT venture, Quartz, will not be associated with the Siege marketplace. Ubi will soon launch the Siege Marketplace’s limited beta in preparation for its official debut in 2024.
At its 2013 debut, over a year after launch, CS:GO’s (now CS2’s) item market sparked enormous interest in the game. Because of this update, CS:GO surpassed all other first-person shooter esports and quickly became one of Steam’s most popular games. However, a third-party grey market sprung up around the game and validated transactions using automated Steam trading bots, which generated unwanted complications for Valve and the competitive community: gambling and match-fixing scandals.
Ubisoft has not yet commented on how it plans to handle the potential occurrence of these problems. Although R6 Credits are the only medium of exchange according to the publisher, grey markets may emerge in the event of a trading system.
Though Siege players may not be as rarity or cosmetic collecting crazed as Counter-Strike 2 players, I can already see the marketplace becoming a major attraction. For better or worse, the debut of the CS:GO market changed everything, as any CS2 player worth their salt can attest. The addition of monetary worth to digital trinkets unlocked with a $2 loot box key gave Counter-Strike a previously absent sense of development and gave players a legitimate opportunity to put their own skin in the game. While Siege does provide premium loot boxes, players may earn a plethora of cosmetics just by playing the game.
There may be a sudden appreciation in the value of the gun skins and operator outfits that millions of Siege veterans have been hoarding for the past eight years. On the other hand, if you win big on Steam, you can afford to buy the next big video game without breaking the bank. Even if you won a ton of money on the Siege marketplace, all it would do is earn you credits to spend on more skins. So, it’s easy to understand how the potential success of gray markets could matter greatly. In 2019, in response to a complex money laundering scam using CS:GO, Valve implemented new trading restrictions.
