Rainbow Six Siege's evaluation period for new operators in professional play has long been considered a sensible choice. Since 2018, operators have been unable to be picked in pro games for the first three months of their life on the live servers. However, as of Y7S2's Operation Vector Glare, developer Ubisoft will be removing this limiter.
By keeping new operators on a tight leash, pro teams have historically been given plenty of time to become familiar with the latest weapons in their compositional arsenal, while Ubisoft has been afforded extra time to make any necessary balance adjustments, or fix any pesky bugs as they arise. Now it seems that the studio is throwing caution to the wind, though it appears to be a calculated risk.
Discussing the change, Rainbow Six esports director Wei Yue calls the removal of the evaluation a "huge change" for Siege esports. "It really is a testament to our balancing teams, [and] our game designer teams [that] we feel that our operators are now ready from the start to be integrated into the highest level of competition," he says.
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