Rainbow Six Siege has had a cheating problem, and one that’s been growing worse over the past several months. Today, Ubisoft detailed its plans for dealing with those cheaters, including improved internal testing, hotfixes, and improved security for ranked players. Some of those changes have already taken place, some are coming in the near future, and still more are a bit further down the road.
Ubisoft has increased its “internal penetration testing efforts,” which is somewhat less dirty than it sounds. The company says this effort will aid in the discovery of weak points in the game’s architecture, so that they can be found and fixed before hackers are able to take advantage of them.
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A new hotfix has corrected “one of the hacks that has popped up recently.” Ubisoft isn’t explicit about what that cheat is, but it’s likely the defuser hack, which let cheaters win the game from their own spawn point. Quick deployment for such fixes is set to be the norm, as the developers have improved the patching process such that they can send out hotfixes as soon as they’re validated.
Starting July 16, a ban wave affecting 600 players will go out globally, targeting players that have been boosted by hacks. Ubisoft says its “primary focus” following that will be to require two-factor authentication for all PC players before allowing them into ranked. The developers aren’t offering any dates for those future actions until they have something concrete to announce.
Other potential, as-yet-unconfirmed changes include MMR restrictions. The developers are considering negating MMR changes from matches where a banned cheater played, or placing restrictions on skill gaps in ranked parties. They’re also looking into improved reporting options, and – again, potentially – “taking legal actions.”
You can read full details at the Ubisoft blog. You might also want to bone up on the best Rainbow Six Siege operators– if hackers are going to go down, you’re not going to have much excuse for bad strategy.