Rainbow Six Siege caster KiXSTAr argues “for leaning into the esports side” more

One criticism that I've occasionally seen of Rainbow Six Siege is that it's too often balanced with the pro scene in mind. As a former pro turned caster, Michael 'KiXSTAr' Stockley took the view that this approach to balancing is not only healthy for the game, but possibly inevitable, as esports is ingrained in its structure. "We have a large casual base, and it's the largest base in Siege by far," Stockley concedes, speaking with PCGamesN. "But it's a game that caters to esports, not exclusively because the development team has been pushing it in that direction, but naturally, because it’s an esports title. It falls into that category without Ubisoft trying to push it in that direction. "So, when you have a map like Hereford - which is unarguably a bad competitive map - it has largely the same effect in the casual experience. That's not always true and I don't want to generalise, but it makes you wonder what would happen if we had a similar player base to other large esports FPS titles where everyone, from casual and ranked all the way up to competitive, is focused on being better at the competitive side."