Rainbow Six Siege has more players actively playing the game now than it did when the game first launched. Game Rant takes a look at what spurred the drastic change in numbers.

Ubisoft released the long-awaited Brazilian operator DLC for Rainbow Six Siege last week, a move which has seemingly delivered the game it's biggest player base of all time. The current amount of players tuning in to try out Operation Skull Rain has put the player base almost 50% higher than what it was back when the game launched last December, indicating that a large demographic of players are here to stay when it comes to Rainbow Six Siege.

Of course, it may not just be the Operation Skull Rain DLC that has driven players back to the game. The latest update has brought plenty of updates into the mix, and Ubisoft has been making plenty of moves to make the game more palatable with the eSports scene as a whole. The studio recently announced yet another upcoming patch during the Rainbow Six Siege Season 2 finals this week, which will see a nerf to Pulse and balance changes for the hotly debated semi-auto shotgun. Of course, the decision to release a $15 starter version of the game couldn't hurt the numbers, either.

The positive numbers may also be due to the fact that Ubisoft has been cracking down on cheaters and griefers with the new Battle-Eye system, hammering out harsher punishments for those who show poor sportsmanship in both casual and ranked matches. Teamkillers were repeatedly recieve longer ban times and lose 50% of their incoming renown for a limited time, a move which has so far seemed to mitigate what were previously growing numbers of griefers.

Skull Rain has seen the most drastic improvement out of all the season content, as Operation Black Ice resulted in a comparatively insignificant increase to player counts, and the US-based Operation Dust Line only bumped the player count closer to where it was post launch. Operation Skull Rain, however, has taken things a significant step further. 2016 will play host to one more batch of operator content in the form of the Japanese Operator DLC, though the studio hasn't confirmed if it will continue to develop post-release content beyond this year.

Commenting alongside the announcement of the impressive numbers, Rainbow Six Siege creative director Xavier Marquis said "We invest in Rainbow Six Siege as we would invest in our own home - we check the pipes, the foundations and everything else. That's because we're to stay."

If the numbers keep growing like they have since Operation Skull Rain released, we don't doubt it for a second.

Are you still playing Rainbow Six Siege, Ranters?

Source: IGN