GTA 6 will pull players away, Rainbow Six Siege director admits
Rainbow Six Siege creative director Joshua Mills expects the whole industry to lose players when GTA VI launches. Here's how Ubisoft plans to handle it.
Rockstar isn't the only one counting down to GTA VI on November 19; the rest of the industry is bracing too. In an interview with The Game Business reported on September 23, 2026, Joshua Mills, creative director of Ubisoft's Rainbow Six Siege, said he fully expects plenty of players to step away for a while.
What Joshua Mills said
- Everyone will feel it: "We've got a massive launch coming with GTA. It doesn't matter what genre you're in." He expects people, his own team included, to drop other games for GTA VI, then come back.
- No panic: a temporary dip shouldn't be treated as a crisis. "It's about being smart with your expectations so you can keep the team and HQ aligned."
- No pulling back: Ubisoft won't scale down Siege support during the launch window. "Our golden rule is to serve the players who stay like kings and queens."
And a fun coincidence: Siege's Season Four "will drop right around that time," with content Ubisoft hasn't announced yet.
The GTA effect
That a launch this big will pull players from everything else is something the industry takes for granted. What stands out with Mills is that he says it openly and has a plan: rather than hiding, Siege will ship its season as normal and focus on the players who stick around.
Our take
It's the most realistic approach. No live-service game is going to go toe-to-toe with GTA VI's launch, and pretending otherwise would only demoralize a team chasing impossible numbers. If you play both, the good news is Siege won't stand still in the meantime. For Rockstar, it's one more sign of the launch's pull: even its competitors are talking openly about how to weather it.
