Rainbow Six Siege Patch Notes Include New Anti-Cheating Measures and More

A new update for team-based tactical shooter Rainbow Six Siege is coming out this week, and now, Ubisoft has posted the complete patch notes. As detailed on Ubisoft's website, the patch--2.2--arrives March 1 for PC and March 2 for Xbox One and PlayStation 4. Scroll down to see the full patch notes.

Ubisoft says the main goal for patch 2.2 is to establish a "solid competitive experience" before the game's Pro League kicks off later in March. As such, much of the patch is concerned with things like cheating, exploits, and spawn-killing, in addition to "minor tweaks" and bug fixes.

One of the cheating counter-measures to be introduced to Siege through the patch is a new "Report" button, which will allow you to flag behavior you deem to be suspicious. These reports will then be sent to Ubisoft for a final determination.

Another new feature is a kill cam for ranked matches.

"We are aware that there is a certain widespread sentiment that high level ranked matches are often ruined by cheaters. We want to deter 'witch hunting' as much as possible," Ubisoft said. "While there were legitimate design reasons to remove the kill cam from ranked, we cannot compromise on the quality of our game experience. For this reason, we are enabling the kill cam on ranked matches to remove this 'hiding spot' for cheaters."

More from Ubisoft's explanation follows below.

"It will help the community as well as ourselves identify suspicious behaviors with a better level of certainty. Given the nature of our game (destruction, observation tools, high lethality), players are very likely to have doubts about what happened when they get killed," it said. "This causes confusion whether they died by a legitimate player or a cheater. This doubt causes a negative atmosphere for everyone regardless of the presence of cheaters in the match. Therefore, activating the kill cam in Ranked serves two purposes: make it harder for cheaters to hide and improve players' perception by allowing them to witness how they got killed. In the long term, we will also be working on improving the kill cam in order to make it more accurate and reliable."

Siege update 2.2 also makes some playlist changes, including a new custom game setting: infinite overtime rounds. "When Overtime Score Difference is set to 2, combined with an infinite Overtime Rounds amount, the game will be resolved only if a team wins by a +2 differential," Ubisoft said. "This ensures the fairest outcome to a match (since our game is asymmetric)."

Ubisoft is also making a number of tweaks to spawn locations with the aim of reducing the amount of spawn-killing. A full rundown of the spawn changes, including pictures that illustrate the changes, is available here on Ubisoft's website.

In terms of bug fixes, the new patch makes loads of them across the areas of gameplay, level design, and the spectator mode. Note that the list below is not exhaustive, Ubisoft said. Rather, the highlighted issues are the ones that were most commonly reported.

Gameplay Fixes

Operators are in T-Pose and do not display any texture. – FIXED
Hit registration: the player sometimes doesn't receive damage when shot at while in rappel and using a drone. – FIXED
Hit registration: Players sometime take no damage when shot in one of their feet. – FIXED
Hit registration: Defenders have a difficult time damaging a hostage carrier while he or she is in rappel. – FIXED
Weapons sometime appear through walls. – FIXED
The drone sometimes flies out of bounds when thrown. – FIXED
Sometimes drone falls off the maps. – FIXED
Gadgets placed on the ground cannot be put on top of barricade debris. – FIXED
The ADS animation sometimes gets corrupted when shield-wielding Operators aim. – FIXED
Thermite: sometimes, a reinforced trap door will not be destroyed by an Exothermic Charge. – FIXED
Buck: Pressing the gadget key while holding secondary weapon does not go out of Skeleton key mode. – FIXED
Glaz: pressing the gadget key while carrying secondary weapon does not switch scope ON and OFF. – FIXED
Sledge: hammer can be seen floating in the air during end of round camera. – FIXED
Level Design Fixes

Yacht - exploit: players are able to vault near the roof of the front end of the Yacht, inside the ceiling. – FIXED
Yacht: the Secure Area objective area doesn't cover the entire room of the cockpit, preventing the objective to be captured/defended when standing in a specific position. – FIXED
Yacht: Defenders cannot place barbed wire on any interior stairs of the map. – FIXED
Yacht: drones have no collision with a block of ice at East Glacier. – FIXED
Yacht: some red blocking walls not displayed during the Preparation Phase. – FIXED
Oregon - exploit: Attackers can shoot Defenders through a small gap (near Junkyard Spawn Point, EXT Dining Hall). – FIXED
Oregon: drones have difficulty navigating through the two ventilation shafts near the abandoned school bus. – FIXED
Chalet: an invisible collision will prevent characters from shooting at enemies hiding behind it on the 2F near the railing. -FIXED
House: players can fall through the map when rappelling near the River Docks area. – FIXED
House: pillows have no collision with the players' gadgets. – FIXED
Russian Café: the bottom layer of the destructible wall from the Pillar Dining Room cannot be vaulted after destroying the wall. – FIXED
Sometimes, there are lighting issues on maps. – FIXED
Spectator Mode Fixes

The score is not replicated correctly for the spectator during character selection screen. – FIXED
When spectating, the spectator remains with a white screen if the spectated target is killed while being flashed. – FIXED
Spectator sees player's drone from the wrong perspective. – FIXED
Indication of drone elevation in relation to player does not work correctly when in Spectator Mode – FIXED
Tactical view focuses on where the Operator dies and does not allow the camera to move freely until the spectator switches to another player's perspective. – FIXED
Graphic corruptions can be seen when switching between players in first person view. – FIXED
Players' full usernames no longer displayed under their logo when focused on in Spectator Mode – FIXED
Controller does not vibrate after exiting from spectate mode and playing in any mode. – FIXED
PC: The spectator cannot open the Options menu using the F10 key. – FIXED
Miscellaneous Fixes

The countdown (15/10/5 seconds remaining) announcer voice over still happens after the defuser has been planted when the bomb is planted late in the round. – FIXED
PS4: PS4 players met feature from the friends tab in the play station dynamic menu has no functionality. – FIXED
Finally, Ubisoft said it had planned to introduce an "IP protection" feature with this new patch, but "it has proven to be more complicated tech-wise" than anticipated. The feature is still coming "as soon as possible" and when it arrives, it is likely to launch on PC first and come to console later.

"The IP protection will limit how players' IPs are displayed, greatly reducing the possibility of DDoS attacks targeting players within a match," Ubisoft said. "This feature is currently a priority for us."

Siege's 2.2 patch is around 750MB, though Ubisoft says this will vary by platform.