Play Rainbow Six Siege for free again this weekend

Ubisoft is offering another free weekend for its wildly successful tactical FPS Rainbow Six Siege.

In a slightly unusual interpretation of the word “weekend”, Siege will be freely available to play from Thursday 16th of August, continuing through until Monday 20th. According to Ubisoft, this will offer full access to all maps, modes and operators.

The specifics regarding these operators are still under wraps, but Ubisoft has offered a broad sketch of the new characters. According to Ubisoft’s announcement of Grim Sky, the first is a “tough police officer” from the UK specialising in “mob behaviour and snatch-squad tactics”, while the second is an American attacking operator who “remains an enigma within Rainbow Six”. You know you’re black ops when your own team doesn’t know anything about you.

Grim Sky will also see the first reworking of a Siege map, as the Hereford Base gets a remodelling. A teaser trailer for the altered map is below. Full details of the update will be unveiled at the Paris event, assuming you’re not too busy playing Siege at the time of the reveal.

Rick has been fascinated by PC gaming since he was seven years old, when he used to sneak into his dad's home office for covert sessions of Doom. He grew up on a diet of similarly unsuitable games, with favourites including Quake, Thief, Half-Life and Deus Ex. Between 2013 and 2022, Rick was games editor of Custom PC magazine and associated website bit-tech.net. But he's always kept one foot in freelance games journalism, writing for publications like Edge, Eurogamer, the Guardian and, naturally, PC Gamer. While he'll play anything that can be controlled with a keyboard and mouse, he has a particular passion for first-person shooters and immersive sims.