Ubisoft Greenlights a New Rainbow Six Vegas After 18 Years, and the Codename Is Spades
By CriticalPixel ·
Ubisoft has reportedly said yes to the one Rainbow Six game nobody expected it to make. Insider Gaming reported on November 13 that Ubisoft Montreal has been given the green light for a new Rainbow Six: Vegas title, and the project is carrying the codename Spades. That is the first sign of life for the Vegas branch since Rainbow Six: Vegas 2 shipped in 2008, back when this series was still a squad based tactical shooter with a cover system and a casino floor full of bad guys.
The report is specific enough to be useful and loose enough to stay a rumor. Sources told Insider Gaming the game is in early development, that it is one of three new projects spinning up at Ubisoft Montreal, and that a second of those is also set somewhere in the Rainbow Six universe. Whether this ends up as Vegas 3 or a remake is not settled, though the sources leaned toward a proper sequel. IGN picked the story up within a day and Eurogamer followed, though Eurogamer was upfront that it could not independently verify any of it.
What the Report Says
The timeline is the part that should temper expectations. Early development at a studio that has not shipped a Vegas game in 18 years means this is a conversation for 2029 at the earliest, and Insider Gaming says as much when it notes how much longer games take to build now. Vegas launched in 2006, Vegas 2 followed in 2008, and then Ubisoft spent the next decade turning Rainbow Six into a live service machine with Siege. In between came Extraction in 2022, which tried to turn Siege operators into a co-op alien shooting gallery and did not stick. Rainbow Six Tactics, a single player turn based spin-off from Ubisoft Paris, is due in 2027, so the publisher is already testing whether people will pay for Rainbow Six without the Siege structure around it.
There is corporate math behind the greenlight too. Rainbow Six now sits under Vantage Studios, the Ubisoft subsidiary that also holds Assassin's Creed and Far Cry, with Tencent owning a 26.32 percent stake. That structure exists to pull more out of the biggest franchises, and a beloved dormant sub-brand is an easy thing to dust off when the parent company needs a win. Ubisoft has been doing plenty of dusting. Reports of two new Assassin's Creed projects surfaced last week, including one set in ancient Rome, which suggests Vantage is opening the vault across the board.
Why Vegas Still Matters
Vegas was never the thinking man's Rainbow Six. It was the one where you rappelled down the side of a casino, breached a window, and cleared a hotel suite while a slot machine chirped in the background. The first game landed in 2006 to solid reviews, and the sequel arrived a year later with a persistent progression system that tied the campaign, co-op and multiplayer together. IGN scored the original 7.6 and the sequel's limited edition 8.4, which tells you the series was trending upward right as Ubisoft walked away from it.
Terrorist Hunt is the reason people bring this series up at all. It was the mode where a small squad cleared a map full of armed men with one life and no respawns, and it produced a kind of tension that Siege later industrialized into round based competition. Ask anyone who played Vegas 2 online in 2008 and they will mention Terrorist Hunt before they mention the campaign. That mode is also why the reaction to this report is louder than a normal rumor about a franchise that has been asleep for nearly two decades.
The Reaction Is Nostalgia With a Warning Label
Tom Henderson's post pulled roughly 5,000 likes in under a day, and the replies split into two camps that want the same thing. The first camp is pure memory. One reply under the announcement said "the memories of terrorist hunt" and collected 84 likes. Another player wrote that if the new game plays like the originals and keeps co-op PvE, they are in on day one. Those are not complicated demands. They are the demands of people who remember what this series was before operators, seasonal passes and a shop in the lobby.
The second camp is suspicious, and it has earned the right to be. The top reply under the announcement, with 239 likes, predicted Ubisoft would talk up the legacy and then ship a multiplayer only hero shooter live service thing, and pointed at Siege as the warning. Under the Eurogamer version of the story, a reader replied that they will believe it when it is not Siege with a Vegas skin, and that they are out if it is. Ubisoft's most successful shooter has trained a chunk of its own audience to expect the worst from a Vegas revival, because the last 11 years of Rainbow Six have been about monetizing one game instead of making another.
The CriticalPixel Take
My read is that Ubisoft has a rare easy win sitting here and a very easy way to fumble it. Vegas 3 as a 15 hour co-op campaign with Terrorist Hunt and a lean multiplayer suite would sell on nostalgia alone, and it would not have to fight Siege for the same players. Vegas 3 as a live service extraction shooter with three currencies and a seasonal pass would be dead on arrival, and the reply section already knows it. Three simultaneous projects at Ubisoft Montreal is a lot of plates for a company that has been cutting costs and closing studios all year.
The money argues for restraint as well. Vegas 1 is 75 percent off on Steam right now, which is the store quietly telling you what the back catalog is worth. If Ubisoft wants a full price sequel in a few years, the smart move is to spend the next two years reminding people why the name meant something, not to bolt a Vegas map onto a Siege framework and call it a day. Re-releasing the originals with working servers would cost almost nothing and would measure the appetite for you. So would a proper Terrorist Hunt mode in whatever ships first.
What Happens Next
For now this is a report and not an announcement, and Ubisoft has said nothing publicly. Treat the codename as the only hard detail and the three project number as the interesting one. If Spades exists, and if it survives the next two years of restructuring, the version of Rainbow Six that a lot of people have been asking for since 2008 might finally get another shot. The bar is low. Bring back Terrorist Hunt, keep the co-op, and do not put a shop in the lobby.
Sources
Insider Gaming exclusive on the Rainbow Six Vegas return
IGN report on the new Rainbow Six Vegas installment
Eurogamer report on Rainbow Six Vegas and codename Spades
Steam store page for Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six Vegas
Steam store page for Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six Vegas 2