Siege successor Rainbow Six Extraction delayed until early 2022

Rainbow Six Extraction, Ubisoft’s Left 4 Dead-inspired R6 Siege spin-off, has been delayed and will now be deployed January 2022 instead. According to a blog post that doesn’t say much else of substance, the extra four months of development quarantine “will ensure Rainbow Six Extraction is the immersive, cooperative, and thrilling experience we set out to create.”

The first Rainbow Six game to follow on from 2015’s popular R6 Siege, Extraction is a sci-fi co-op hero shooter. Rather than two teams of Operators smashing through walls in ranked PvP matches, Extraction’s players will be on the same side, taking on AI-directed alien zombie creatures in a bid to rid the Earth of their foul contamination.

Fans will of course know that the game, previously dubbed Quarantine, has been spun out of R6 Siege’s 2017 Operation Chimera expansion. The add-on was notable for introducing a time-limited Outbreak event, which briefly transformed Siege into a co-op zombie hunt.

Extraction was previewed earlier this summer and garnered a mixed response. For some, R6 Siege’s slow pace failed to transcribe well to the new environments and L4D-inspired objective-based gameplay. For others, the Sprawl and Missing in Action mechanics, which allowed for dynamic enemy spawns and the need to rescue downed allies, seemed less than intuitive. Also, despite the Operatives being drawn from the ranks of R6 Siege, there seemed less of a reliance on their unique gadgets and abilities than was expected. No doubt managing those expectations has informed the need to instigate a Rainbow Six Extraction delay.

In other delay-related news Riders Republic, Ubisoft’s multiplayer extreme sports compendium (and follow-up to Steep), has also been delayed, and will instead be released October 28. A beta for that one will be announced soon, apparently.