The Rainbow Six Siege community's frustration at the recent price increase for the game has made Ubisoft think again, and the developer has rolled back the price jump on the Standard Edition of the game. Ubisoft had planned to turn the $40 edition into a $60 Advanced Edition with bonus cosmetic items and extra in-game currency, but in a Reddit thread yesterday it said it will be "keeping the Standard Edition in the store at the current price".

The rest of the price increases will go ahead as planned, which means the Gold Edition of the game, which includes the most recent year of DLC operators, will cost $90, rather than its present $70, and the Complete Edition of Siege will run $130, up from $90.

Additionally, Ubisoft said it has been listening to concerns about the rate at which players that buy the $15 Starter Edition of the game unlock new operators (it's very slow, which makes the edition difficult to recommend). "We recognize that this has been a point of frustration for new players, as well as existing players bringing their friends into the game, and have been working on how to make this process more fluid," it said.  "We will be sharing more information about our next steps during the Six Invitational [next month]."

The team is also giving every existing player an Ash Sidewinder Elite skin for free as an apology for the kerfuffle that the price rise caused.

The price reversal on the Standard Edition is very good news—it's currently the best version of the game to buy, and a $20 increase would have put some people off. Likewise, it's encouraging to hear that the Starter Edition may become a viable option for new players. But the price hike on the other editions will still be a source of annoyance.

Click here to read Ubisoft's full statement. The Standard Edition of the game is currently $23 on the Humble Store. 

Ubisoft outlined a major change to the pricing structure of Rainbow Six Siege today, effectively raising the cost of the game by $20 for the average buyer after February 13, 2018. 

At that time the Standard Edition of Siege (currently $40 in most stores) will become the "Advanced Edition," and retail for $60. It's worth underlining that buyers will get slightly more out of this version of the game, but in the form of bonus cosmetic item packs and in-game currency, not operators, although that currency can be spent on operators.

"The Advanced Edition comes with all of the content that the Standard Edition had – access to all Rainbow Six Siege content: modes, maps, weapon options, level progression and the standard amount of time required to unlock the original 20 Operators," reads Ubisoft's blog post. "As an added benefit, the Advanced Edition comes with 600 Rainbow Six Credits, and 10 Outbreak Collection Packs." At this time, 600 Rainbow Six Credits retails for $5.

In kind, the "Gold" edition of the game, which includes the most recent year of DLC operators, will cost $90, rather than its present $70. The Gold Edition will also include 10 of the new Outbreak Collection Packs and in-game currency. And finally, the Complete Edition of Siege will run $130.

As these changes roll out next month, the $15 Starter Edition, which I do not recommend, will remain in tact at that price, and will offer the same benefits.

In summary, after February 13:

• Starter Edition - $15
• Advanced Edition (currently Standard Edition) - $60 (currently $40)
• Gold Edition - $90 (currently $70)
• Complete Edition - $130 (currently $90)

For more than a year, Rainbow Six Siege has been a complicated game to buy. Ubisoft split the game into four editions, with the lowest-tier Starter Edition of the game essentially operating on its own, slower economy, offering cheap entry but locking owners into paying as much as 10 times more non-cash currency (Renown) to unlock individual operators. Rainbow Six Siege has 32 characters, and plans to add eight more in 2018. 

I'll be updating our "How to buy Rainbow Six Siege" story with new recommendations soon.

As someone with lots of good things to say about it, I do believe Siege is worth $60, but the cost increase will make it harder to recommend to all PC gamers. Siege is now more than two years old, and while it's arguably in its prime in terms of balance, features, and popularity, a price increase feels slightly unprecedented. The only comparison I can think of is games like ARK: Survival Evolved that have gone up after leaving Early Access.

To that end: I'd encourage anyone with a strong interest in the game to buy the Standard Edition now while it's still available at $40. Or, even better, get it on the Humble Store now for $24 before the deal expires in a few days.

If you already own the Standard Edition, you won't experience any changes to your game or account, per this official tweet below:

The Rainbow Six Siege patch 4.2, also known as the Operation White Noise Mid-Season Reinforcements, is now live on the technical test server. The update nerfs Ela, with reductions to her SMG magazine size from 50 rounds to 40 and also to the effects of her concussive mines, which will still reduce the movement speed of enemies caught in their impact zone but will no longer disable sprinting. 

"Ela overpowers her competition. Players select her almost every round, and for a good reason. All of the data we have on her (such as win ratio, K/D ratio, and Kills per round) shows that she needs to be nerfed. We have found this to be primarily because of her SMG and to a lesser extent her concussion mines," Ubisoft wrote in the patch notes. 

The SMG was nerfed slightly in a previous update, but it wasn't enough to achieve the desired effect. "For now, we’re trying to balance her while keeping her SMG’s uniqueness, which lets her fight several opponents at a time better than other defenders. We will consider other ways of nerfing this weapon if this is not enough." 

Concussive effects are being reduced across the board and so will affect Zofia as well as Ela, but Ela is the primary target as Zofia also has impact grenades she can chuck around. Concussive effects on sight and hearing will remain unchanged, but the impact on movement and camera speed will be reduced from seven to four seconds. "Compared to other gadgets of this nature, the concussion effect is superior in almost every way: it greatly affects movement speed, massively slows down rotation speed, and also reduces a player’s ability to hear and see," Ubisoft explained. 

Ash's R4-C assault rifle has also been toned down a bit, from 41 damage to 39, while Capitao's Para-308 damage has been boosted from 43 to 48, and the intensity of its recoil has been lessened. Ubisoft said that Capitao will require more long-term solutions to make him a sufficiently attractive choice, but for now "it's clear that his main assault rifle is too weak." 

Twitch, Bandit, and Lesion have also been tweaked, and changes have been made to temporal filtering, the bomb interface, and the caster camera, which should make life better (and more informative) for viewers. The full rundown of changes is up at rainbow6.ubisoft.com.   

If you've played Rainbow Six Siege in the past few weeks then you've probably come across Jäger players exploiting a glitch with his deployable shield. The glitch makes him nearly impossible to kill, and Ubisoft has been rushing to fix it. That fix is nearly complete, the developer said on Reddit on Friday, and a patch should be live in the next few days, which is good news.

Usually Jäger plonks his shield on the ground so that other defenders can use it as cover, but by following a series of steps players can get it to sit on top of their gun so that they can run around with the shield covering the upper half of their body. Their view is not obstructed by the shield, so they can still shoot as normal, but nobody else can shoot through it.

Basically, it breaks the game. If the Jäger player crouches behind cover then they are virtually impossible to tag, but they can still kill any attackers that come into view. As you'd expect, it's become pretty popular with a certain group of players. 

Ubisoft has not set an exact date for the patch, but says it should happen "earlier in the week". For people that have had rounds ruined by the exploit, it can't come soon enough.