ENCE has announced it has exited Rainbow Six Siege esports.
The Finnish esports organisation said the decision was made ‘due to financial infeasibility’ of fielding a roster in Ubisoft’s tactical shooter title.
As a result of the decision, the Malta Cyber Series will be the last event for ENCE’s current roster of players before they look elsewhere for an organisation to represent.
The event takes place from March 14th to 16th, 2025 and features six teams competing for $20,000 (~£15,451) in prize money.
The decision to leave Rainbow Six comes 12 months after ENCE returned to the esport after a five-year absence. It has confirmed its players are already free to explore new opportunities.
“We have failed to commercialise our R6 operations with limited skin sales and partnership opportunities,” revealed Mika Kuusisto, CEO of ENCE.
“It has become clear that we would need to be a R6 Share partner team in order to keep investing into the R6 scene and to build sustainable operations in the long term.”
In November 2024, Ubisoft revealed a revamped R6 Share programme aiming to provide organisations more opportunities to generate income by creating and selling in-game items.
A total of 20 teams are part of the programme, including Team Falcons, DarkZero Esports, and Team Secret. R6 Share also has an affiliate programme, expanding support for teams competing in regional competitions across Europe, the Americas, and APAC regions.
“Things don’t always go as you plan, and sadly, we can’t continue in R6 even if I would personally want to,” added Niklas ‘Willkey’ Ojalainen, General Manager of ENCE.
“I want to give a special thank you to the ENCE R6 team manager, Olivier, for taking good care of the boys and helping with the language barrier. Best of luck to you all for your future ventures.”
The organisation’s departure from Rainbow Six Siege came a few months after announcing it would return to Rainbow Six Siege after missing from the scene for years. This order of decisions shocked some R6 fans. It had only been three months since ENCE announced a return to Rainbow Six Siege with the new players.
Said one on X: “Should have made the choice before roster lock season not after, since you weren’t at SI you had plenty of time to figure out a way to not f— over your players.”
A similar sentiment was shared by another fan: “Shame you couldn’t sort this out prior to SI, so the players could find roster before lock. Thought ENCE was better than that.”
The announcement to leave Rainbow Six Siege left many in the R6 Siege community disappointed. Many called the decision ‘lame’ and ‘disappointing,’ while others even stated that they had predicted something like this would happen. The biggest issue, however, was that many felt the players had been screwed over.
