Rainbow Six Siege disables Clash, other gadgets causing game-breaking exploits

During a week that should be filled with anticipation for Operation Phantom Sight, Rainbow Six Siege matches have become a minefield of game-breaking exploits that make Clash, IQ, and certain deployable shield-wielders unstoppable. In an extremely rare move by developer Ubisoft, the offending gadgets and operator are completely disabled for all players until the bugs are squashed in a patch next week.

Instead of making players wait, Ubi is nipping its problem in the bud early by quarantining the gadgets that make the bugs possible. As of last night, Clash is unavailable. Sometime today, claymores and deployable shields also get the boot.

Word of these exploits spread like wildfire over the weekend as opportunistic youtubers began posting tutorial videos detailing how to easily pull off these tricks in-game. With the exploits active, Clash can shoot through her shield, IQ can turn invisible, and three defenders can affix deployable shields to their weapon and block the upper body from harm. If that last bug sounds familiar, that’s because it’s the very same bug that plagued Jäger back in 2017, now compatible with more ops. To see the horror in action, check out the gifs below.

Source: Limetimerhymer on Reddit

Source: im_p3rfection on Reddit

Source: T-32Dank on Reddit

Thanks, I hate it.

During that 2017 exploit, and other similar bugs since then, Ubi was relatively slow to patch in a remedy. Veteran players usually expect to wait weeks before a proper fix. In a blog post, Ubi says the severe nature of these exploits have shown “the importance of reactivity on our part, and the need to act more quickly on issues of this magnitude. As such, our team will develop a more thorough outline for how we should respond to these situations moving forward, with the ultimate goal of improved reaction speed.”

Given Siege's complexity, its history of operator and gadget-specific bugs isn't surprising, and a system to quickly disable exploits feels overdue. I hope Ubi doesn’t hesitate to act even faster the next time around. This isn’t the first time Ubi has utilized a quarantine in a moment of desperation. When Hibana was first released in 2016, a critical bug on the PS4 version would drop the FPS to zero when she was used. Ubi quickly pulled her from rotation until a patch was issued a few days later.