For the four years since Rainbow Six Siege was created, colorblind fans have been begging Ubisoft for a visual mode that would even out the playing field; in 2019, Ubisoft said it had no plans for such a feature. However, when we spoke with art director Alex Karpazis at Six Invitational 2020, he told us that the studio is currently "working on a solution" for colorblind players.

"We are currently working on something." We are working hard on it because we want it to be as accessible as possible to all our players". Karpazis did not give any other details, such as when we will see this feature in-game. While the news is encouraging, this is not the first time Ubi has made similar promises.

Back in March 2018, community developer Craig Robinson said the studio was "working towards fixing" the accessibility status of Siege. Since that work never materialized in the game, skepticism about this new commitment is warranted. In the past year alone, there have been an average of two posts per month from colorblind players on the official Siege subreddit; Siege is one of the only multiplayer games without colorblindness support.

For colorblind players, Siege may feel like a different game. Depending on the type of color blindness, certain operator skins and reticles may disappear into wall textures. Many players report difficulty seeing the thin red tripwires on claymores, a fatal flaw that can easily kill you in Siege. Most multiplayer games mitigate this problem with simple color filters for the most common type of color blindness. Others go even further, such as "Overwatch's" extensive color options (see below).

Every competitive game requires different tuning. After all, color filters can be abused by players who are not colorblind and gain an unfair advantage. While Ubisoft's official commitment to accessibility is encouraging, the lack of detailed explanation from Karpazis left me with the impression that the colorblindness feature is still in its infancy. Hopefully this will become a fixture.