Imagine booting up your favorite game and seeing an impossible number of credits under your account. We’re talking “you could buy the entire storefront every day for years on end” type of money. Well, that’s exactly the type of good fortune that befell a number of Rainbow Six Siege players over the weekend. The credits were real and technically the equivalent of millions in real-world dollars. Hackers had pulled a fast one on Ubisoft.
Rainbow Six Siege is a free-to-play tactical shooter originally released in 2015. A decade after release, the realistic squad-based FPS still sees a healthy community of players logging on every day to defuse bombs and rescue hostages. Technically, Siege comes packed with anti-cheat technology meant to stop nefarious actors from tampering with the game — but this evidently wasn’t enough to stop an attack that transpired on Dec. 27, a couple of days after Christmas.
That Saturday, Siege fans took to social media to share bewildered posts asking why their accounts suddenly had billions in Renown, the game’s currency. Some immediately clocked that something was amiss and refrained from spending the credits out of fear of getting banned. Others were surprised to see that the game did, in fact, let them spend the credits however they wanted. Things got so out of hand, players report that the shop itself started experiencing issues as countless fans tried using their ill-gotten gains. A number of players claim that they bought everything they possibly could while the credits were active.
“I opened the game after like two weeks of not playing and now have 2 billion renown,” one confused player wrote on Reddit. “GREATEST day of my life,” another player wrote in the same Reddit thread. “FELT LIKE A RICH BILLIONARE.”
“Siege market crash incoming,” another joked.
On Saturday, Ubisoft put a stop to the festivities by pulling Rainbow Six Siege down entirely. A few hours later, Ubisoft informed players that no one would get banned for spending the credits during the hack, but that the company was working on rolling back the illegitimate transactions. A day later, Ubisoft said it was conducting “extensive quality control tests” to make sure everything worked correctly.
“The team is focused on getting players back into the game as quickly as possible,” Ubisoft said on the Rainbow Six X account. “Please know that this matter is being handled with extreme care and therefore, timing cannot be guaranteed. We will provide another update as soon as we know more. Thank you all for your patience and understanding as we continue to tackle this.”
While everything is back to normal now, players have been left with more questions than answers. Ubisoft did not share specifics regarding how or why the hack transpired, or whether any sensitive account information was leaked. Ubisoft did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
“Have they even mentioned the severity of the breach?” one fan asked in a thread discussing the aftermath. Other fans are empathizing with the unfortunate timing of the hack, which transpired during a major holiday that likely had fewer developers than usual who could address the issues.
