‘You can’t just take any IP character and throw them in because it just doesn’t work. That’s where skin collaborations work’ — The Doom Slayer is the latest gaming icon to join Rainbow Six Siege and will be fragging his way onto Season 4
Doom’s iconic anti-hero is ripping and tearing his way into Rainbow Six Siege. Taking to the stage in Osaka during Rainbow Six Siege’s 2026 Majors tournament, Creative Director Jonathan Mills revealed that the legendary first-person shooter (FPS) protagonist will be fragging his way into Siege as a new skin for Tachanka. Heading to the game on December 22, players will get a chance to rip and tear their way across the Siege universe as part of the game’s long-awaited fourth season. While the Doom Slayer’s in-game skin has yet to be revealed, his appearance was teased via a short video. As a portal to hell opens into the biker gang compound map Clubhouse, the Doom Slayer blasts a moving Rainbow Six drone before Mick Gordon’s signature guitar riff kicks in.
The Doom Slayer skin comes after a wave of recent similar collaborations, with everything from Halo, Resident Evil, and Tomb Raider skins making appearances in Ubisoft’s FPS. “Doom means so much to me personally, and for many on the team that played Doom as kids growing up,” says Game Director Chris Budgens. “I think that skins are the best way [to implement most collaborations]. With skins, we get a lot more leeway in terms of having fun with the characters and franchises.
To date, Rainbow Six Siege has only one permanent canon playable operator from a different fictional universe — Metal Gear Solid’s Solid Snake — and as The Doom Slayer joins as a skin, it appears that Ubisoft Montreal wants to keep it that way for now. “We don’t want to just flood the game with different partners,” reflects Budgens. “It has to be right.”
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Snake’s inclusion, it seems, has been well judged. Since Solid Snake’s surprise introduction to Siege in March 2026, he’s become a beloved character in the game, slotting into Siege’s more grounded fictional universe with surprising ease. As I sit backstage at the Osaka 2026 majors, Ubisoft Montreal tells me that Solid Snake’s inclusion was an IP infiltration years in the making. “We had originally brought up the idea, and [Konami] were interested right from the get-go,” reveals Budgens. “One of the funny things was, what does this actually look like? Are we going with a skin? We had some interest in bringing Solid Snake as the operator into the game, but we had never really done that before—an operator from another franchise.”
Creative director Jonathan Mills, however, needed a bit more convincing that Snake would work in Siege’s gritty, grounded universe. “Alex Karpazis, the previous creative director, brought the idea to me and said, ‘Listen, I want to bring [Snake] into the game, and I was like, ‘You want to do what? How’s that going to work?’” recalls Mills, “’If you say the cardboard box, I’m walking away right now!”
In order to make Snake work alongside Sam Fisher and alongside SWAT team-esque operators, they decided to reimagine Snake as a Tom Clancy-esque agent. “We came up with a very clear rationale, which was: it’s Solid Snake as if he existed within the Rainbow Six universe,” recalls Mills. “It allows us to take everything that’s iconic about the character and make it more grounded and canon in Rainbow Six…. Then we got to make that legendary pairing with Snake and Zero[Sam Fisher], an opportunity of a lifetime to be able to do that.”
Where the Doom Slayer is very much a classic skin-based collaboration, Mills suggests that The Boss’ inclusion in Rainbow Six Siege has opened the door to future fully fledged third-party operators. “We’ve definitely talked about other collaborations for a canon-based operator,” teases Mills. “We’re very, very strict about who we would work with on this and who we would bring in because, again, we have to rationalise it one way or another. You can’t just take any IP character and throw them in because it just doesn’t work. That’s where skin collaborations work fine… [but for operators ] There are some ideas, but nothing to confirm at the moment.”
You can read more about what to expect from Rainbow Six Siege season 4 here.
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Share this article Join the conversation Follow us Add us as a preferred source on Google Newsletter Subscribe to our newsletter Doom’s iconic anti-hero is ripping and tearing his way into Rainbow Six Siege. Taking to the stage in Osaka during Rainbow Six Siege’s 2026 Majors tournament, Creative Director Jonathan…
