The author clearly does nothing to hide his intentions. He is talking down on the game for no reason at all.
The first part where he draws the comparison with Evolve is just ridicoulus:
But publisher 2K, so convinced of the game's quality, put in place various DLC packages and pre-order bonuses to milk what it expected to be an enormous community. The perception took hold that Evolve was ripping off players—who had to buy the "core" game first—and it failed to sell in anything like the numbers expected. Now it's dead.
And then he directly puts this sentence after that:
Rainbow Six: Siege walks a dangerously similar path.
This is completly nonsense. Siege has one of the most consumer friendly business models out there with only a few cosmetics weapon skins behind a paywall. All future DLC and all new operators are free for everyone. There is no comparison to make between Siege and Evolve.
He then goes on clearly bashing the game without any evidence of his statements:
Prime among them is that the game is sold at a premium price (a rapidly-falling £50/$60)
The price tag is not rapidly falling. On Steam it is still the same while on UPlay is a 25% discount ongoing. There are no signs that the price tag is actually falling.
He then goes on complaining about the Season pass but he did not mention at all that all upcoming DLC is free for all players.
but at the same time includes a layer of microtransactions based around XP boosters—which will help players unlock stuff faster—as well as cosmetic weapon skins and a season pass for future DLC content.
He obviously avoids saying that all content is for free but creates a little loophole so you can not blame him with this sentence:
That might sound heinous, but it's to the credit of the development team at Ubisoft Montreal that it doesn't encroach too much on the core experience.
Then he follows up with a statement, that the microtransactions are a bad impact:
These microtransactions, however, haven't had a good impact on the game's image, and much like Evolve, Ubisoft is in danger of losing players before they've even given the game a try.
I followed this sub here and the news about this game quite a bit and also read the steam reviews. I can not see any complains about the microtransactions. In contrary, the businessmodel has been prasied a lot by the community.
After that follows a part where he links a screenshot to the renown boosters, but he explains nowhere what you can buy with them:
Some looked at this, and the layer of microtransactions that already existed in-game, and reached the understandable conclusion that Siege would soon enough be a fully free-to-play game, making people even less likely to try it out. It's hard to think of how Ubisoft could have botched it more completely.
He constantly bashes the game for it's microtransactions, yet in no sentence explains what they actually contain. He is deliberatly trying to get the reader to draw a comparison with other ubisoft games and wants to shine a bad light on Siege.
While I agree that microtransaction in a 60$ title are unacceptable, I also must admit that Ubi has pulled off a really fair business model in Siege that you have to give them credit for. Something the author fails miserably.
To sum it up: The first part of the article already bashes the game without giving any evidence to his claims as well as spreading false information about it.
In the second part he goes on to complain about the servers at launch. The first real thing to complain about. He then goes on to give examples of bad netcode:
Even worse, the killcams often show how unfair everything was, with your killer shooting a full second after you got into cover, yet the boomerang headshot still landing.
This is completly without any evidence. We have seen a lot of those gifs here in this sub and always was it totally up for discussion if the player had a high ping or not. The ping values were never included in the gifs of people who experienced this.
Then another accusation of bad matchmaking servers followed by no evidence or explanation as to why they are bad:
This puts Ubisoft's credibility at stake with regards to online, because if the publisher's matchmaking and servers aren't good—and at the moment they're terrible—players have nowhere else to go.
Especially the matchmaking servers are working very good since the last few patches and the complains about people not finding a match are almost vanished.
After that he lists a bunch of problems of the game and makes it sound like they are still present and everyday nature. A little sentence:
The three patches released so far claim to address such issues but, [...]
lets the reader know those indeed have been fixed, which can be missed quickly. He then lists other problems.
Wouldn't you think it's more important to list the current problems and then refer to the already fixed ones later? No. He does it the other way around. He bashes the game for it's fixed problems and then lists a few current problems that are not as bad.
The next part is even worse. He lists what major improvement the big patches brought to the game, that's fine until he reaches the point of changing your data center:
Patch 1.2 introduced the ability to let you manually change the data centre you're connecting to by editing the gamesettings.ini file. Very PC gamer. The developers justified this as the quickest way to get a fix out there for a common problem, before adding it in-game, which is fine, but does bring to mind a mechanic hanging off the front of an F1 car.
He makes it sound like you would have to change registry files instead of a simple .INI. Navigating to the ‘My Documents\My Games\your Uplay ID’ folder is not comparable to 'a mechanic hanging off the front of an F1 car.' and should be basic knowledge.
At least he gives a source to the patch notes...
After that he blames the game for having cheater, which is a valid concern, and then he makes it sound like it's riddled with teamkillers but does not mention a. that you can vote kick people and b. that this is common nature in games where you play with randoms and c. that there is indeed an auto kick feature for teamkillers. He makes it sound like the game is full of those, that there are no actions to do against them and that it is Sieges fault for having them, though all online games suffer from them:
Don't get me started on the lack of a structure to deal with griefers and teamkillers, because we could go on like this forever.
Besides that part is a little picture of Kapkantraps with that caption:
There are countless minor irritations in Siege alongside the big ones—placing Kapkan's traps on outer doors always brings up this warning, and setting the traps is needlessly finicky.
Where on earth is it finicky to set Kapkan traps? You look at the door and press the button. I never had problems and can not recall a single thread claiming to have some.
And yeah, you get a notice when placing them but does that really hurt your experience? In the end it's a good notice so you do not break down barricades that lead outdoors, saving you a lot of time.
The part about bodies clipping through wall is a serious problem. Fortunately it doesn't happen as often as he claims it does. And uplay is a pain as well. There he is right.
Conclusion
He deliberatly talks down on rainbow siege and most of the times, doesn't even give sources to his claims. He also compares it to a totally different game, making it look like that Sieges businessmodel is comparable to Evolves one. Which it clearly is not. He concentrates on the negative parts and doesn't even once explain the good parts and how you get all DLC for free.
He also makes it look like already solved bugs are still in the game and only slightly calls out that they may have been fixed, leaving a lot of interpretation open for the reader.
He is clearly taking advantage of the general Ubisoft "hate" going on on the internet. He is leaving a lot open for interpretation because he knows the masses will pick it up. He also is giving examples that are hard to understand when you don't own the game. Like the screenshot with the Kapkan trap.
In no way is Siege a perfect game, and Ubisoft and Uplay isn't suddenly good either, but you need to compare it to what could have been a few years ago. Uplay got imporved a lot, people praise Siege for it's business model and the fairness it brings and the game with the recent patches is more than just "playable". It plays really smooth with only minor problems.