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Rainbow Six Siege DDoS attackers that targeted Operation Ember Rise will be banned from the game for ever, Ubisoft has announced (via PCGamesN and ZDNet).
It has to be clear by now. Stop hijacking games. It never ends well for the culprits. Like the case of World of Warcraft Classic, there’s a considerable chunk of the community who become cross and grumpy because they can’t play the game they’ve waited all week to get stuck into. Or, like the ‘bad actors’ manipulating Dota 2 by cheating and using smurf accounts, you’ll get yourself permanently banned.
Denial of service attacks have been affecting Rainbow Six Siege since the start of Ember Rise, the third season of the multiplayer competitive shooter that brought two new Operators, new gadgets, and a Kanal map rework. It is theorised that the attacks are a retaliation against the update’s reset of multiplayer rankings. By causing server lag, players would become frustrated and leave the match, therefore allowing the DDoS attacker to be rewarded with rank points. However, because three Rainbow Six Siege matches are hosted per server, this affected all matches instead of just the one the attacker was participating in.
Ubisoft has said that the ‘worst offenders’ that instigated the DDoS attacks will be banned from the game next week, and waves of sanctions will ‘continue as needed’ for PC and console players. In addition, the post stated that Ubisoft has ‘discussed the current situation with our legal team’, and will send cease and desist letters to those enabling the attacks.
‘Legal action against prominent DDoS/DoS attackers is in progress,’ Ubisoft ominously added. With regards to the duration of the bans, it has confirmed that offending players will be banned permanently from Rainbow Six Siege. Now, each Rainbow Six Siege match will be hosted on a separate server and penalties for leaving matches early will be removed for the time being until ‘legitimate players’ are no longer affected by the attacks.
How successful these strategies will be remains to be seen, but a permanent ban is enough to dissuade even the most disgruntled competitive player.
