Rainbow Six Siege cheaters will lose their seasonal rank and rewards

Earlier this month, Ubisoft provided a quick overview of its efforts to combat cheating in Rainbow Six Siege, which included a plan for a wave of bans on players with boosted accounts—that is, accounts whose MMR [Matchmaking Rating] has been artificially manipulated. Today it posted an update on that situation, saying that roughly 1,300 boosted players were suspended for 15 days this week, and promising harsher penalties to come.

Suspended players will be returned to action before the end of the current season, but their ill-gotten gains will not. "We are currently assessing how we will be delivering this from a technical side, but all players sanctioned for this will have their rank and rewards removed prior to the launch of Season 3," Ubisoft wrote.

It's a big move—the loss of seasonal rank and rewards (a unique weapon charm, mostly) is a serious deterrent along with a two-week vacation—but Ubi also emphasized that it does not consider the suspensions to be a long-term fix. "It was a stop-gap while we work on the solution, which is adjusting MMR gains/losses for all players in a match with a cheater," it wrote.

A timeline for that change to be brought into place hasn't been set, but it sounds like it'll be quite awhile yet. Ubisoft expects to have the system design finalized next week, at which point it will be able to figure out what resources will be needed to pull it off, and come up with a better idea of when it will happen. Work on two-step verification for ranked play is also continuing, and Ubisoft expects to roll that out sometime after after the start of season 3.

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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.