Rainbow Six Siege's development team would like the competitive shooter to go free-to-play one day.

That's according to game director Leroy Athanassoff who spoke to PC Gamer at the Six Invitational 2020. "It’s a company decision. I think on the development team we want that at some point. We want the game to be accessible to everyone,” Athanassoff said.

However, he added that while the desire is there to make Siege free-to-play, Athanassoff reckons the game isn't ready for it yet. “You need certain features ready to be a good and successful free-to-play game,” he said.

One of these features according to the game director is a solution to smurfing in Siege. Smurfing is when an experienced player creates a new account in order to play against players of lesser skill. "What’s important for us is that we find out as soon as possible that a player is highly skilled in the things that matter,” Athanassoff said. “The problem right now is that you can play a certain amount of matches with Copper players while you’re a Diamond.”

Ubisoft has a team dedicated to making smurfing less of a problem in Rainbow Six Siege. If that team is able to lessen its impact then Siege will be a little closer to going free-to-play. One of the ways to do this is to change how a player's skill is worked out.

Currently, Siege's ranking system looks at a player's win rate, but Athanasoff's team is looking to bring in more stats so smurfs aren't matched with lower-skilled players as often.

More on the future of Rainbow Six Siege was recently revealed during the Six Invitational 2020. New operators Iana and Oryx were announced, alongside a player reputation system, and confirmation that Siege would be coming to PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X.

Chris Priestman is a freelancer who writes news for IGN. Follow him on Twitter.