Ubisoft has revealed it will be tweaking the look of online tactical shooter Rainbow Six: Siege.
In a blog post on the game's website, the French publishing giant announced it was going to removing references to violence, sex and death. One example is changing the melee symbol from being a knife to a fist. In addition, iconography found around the maps is also getting a lick of fresh paint - a skull icon from one level is being covered up, while gambling machines have also been given the chop in another area.
This comes as the game is on the verge of being rolled out into Asian markets, many of which have strict regulations about what can and cannot appear in media content.
Of course, Ubisoft could have separate builds of the game for different parts of the world, but as the firm says in its blog post, having a single build makes for an easier development process.
Taking to the Rainbow Six subreddit, community manager wrote Jenny 'UbiNoty' Feng defended the changes, writing: "Moving forward, we do recognize and understand that for some elements, it is not possible to have a completely global build. Thus, there will be some things that are split build-wise. While our goal is to maintain as close a parallel as possible between builds, we will also not compromise the core integrity of the gameplay and mechanics as they exist currently."
In addition to the Asian markets, it possible that Ubisoft is looking to Rainbow Six: Siege's future as an esport title. In the pro-gaming sector, attracting big non-endemic advertisers has been the Holy Grail for some time. Removing this kind of potentially 'objectionable' content could make for an easier sell to these kinds of companies.
This isn't the only major change that Ubisoft has made to its premier esports tactical shooter. The firm has been adding a raft of functionality to fight toxicity within the game's community, though has admitted this is something of an uphill battle. Ubisoft has also been clamping down on cheating, axing 1,300 accounts for this offence earlier in this year.
Since its launch at the end of 2015, Rainbow Six: Siege has attracted 35m players - a figure made more impressive by the fact that the game had a much slower start to life than many thought. This was in part due to the Paris terror attacks in November of that year that saw Ubisoft - rightfully - pull much of its marketing push for the shooter out of respect.
The increasing importance of merging markets such as China is just one of the topics we'll be covering at PC Connects London 2019. Come find out about the future of the PC games market at the show on January 21st and 22nd.
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