Rainbow Six Siege cheater who swatted Ubisoft Montreal with a fake hostage call gets a three-year community sentence

(Image credit: Eric Thomas (Getty Images))

A Montreal Gazette report says 22-year-old Yanni "Y4nnOXX" Ouahioune, the man responsible for a 2020 swatting that forced the evacuation of Ubisoft Montreal, has been given a three-year community sentence—a non-custodial sentence that allows people convicted of some non-violent crimes to serve their time outside of prison—by a court in France.

The incident occurred in November 2020, after a false report was made to police of a "hostage situation" at Ubisoft Montreal led to a major, day-long police operation. Ultimately, no hostages were found, and fortunately no one was injured; after it was determined that the call was false, Montreal Police said it would launch an investigation to "shed light on the call."

Suspicion eventually fell on Ouahioune, a French citizen and Rainbow Six Siege player who had been banned from the game multiple times for cheating and abusing developers and other players. He denied any involvement with the swatting, but clearly had a beef with Ubisoft: Videos on his still-extant YouTube channel include a warning that he's going to "punish Rainbow Six Siege with cheats of hell," and a rap track called Fuck Ubisoft.

"We acknowledge the court’s decision," Ubisoft Montreal said in a statement. "In this trial we were committed to representing the interests of our employees who were affected by this false hostage-taking alert at our Montreal studio. It was important for us to denounce this violent and unacceptable incident.

"Out of respect for our employees who were affected by this event, we will not comment further."

Ouahioune's sentence actually covers three separate cases in total: In June he pleaded guilty to committing a DDoS attack against French government offices and making threats against Minecraft studio Mojang.

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Andy has been gaming on PCs from the very beginning, starting as a youngster with text adventures and primitive action games on a cassette-based TRS80. From there he graduated to the glory days of Sierra Online adventures and Microprose sims, ran a local BBS, learned how to build PCs, and developed a longstanding love of RPGs, immersive sims, and shooters. He began writing videogame news in 2007 for The Escapist and somehow managed to avoid getting fired until 2014, when he joined the storied ranks of PC Gamer. He covers all aspects of the industry, from new game announcements and patch notes to legal disputes, Twitch beefs, esports, and Henry Cavill. Lots of Henry Cavill.