According to Eurogamer.net, a major third-party hack on December 27th forced Ubisoft to “intentionally shut down” Rainbow Six Siege and its Marketplace. The hackers gave every player 2 billion credits and renown each, unlocked all premium skins for free, and took control of the game’s ban feed, banning and unbanning thousands of accounts. They even made the ban ticker display lyrics from Michael Jackson’s “Billie Jean.” Ubisoft performed a rollback of transactions and launched a “soft launch” for a small number of players on December 28th before fully reopening the game on the 29th. However, the publisher warns players who logged in during the hack may temporarily lose some owned items, with corrections continuing for two weeks. As of now, the game’s service status page shows “degraded” or full “outage” status for connectivity, authentication, store, and matchmaking on every platform, including PC, PS5, and Xbox.
The Trust Problem
Here’s the thing: this isn’t just a server outage. This is a fundamental breach of trust. Hackers didn’t just crash the game; they puppeteered its most sensitive administrative functions—the ban system and the economy. They literally controlled who could play and flooded the market with fake currency. For a competitive, live-service game like Siege, that’s a nightmare scenario. Ubisoft’s response, while methodical, highlights how deep the damage goes. A two-week correction period and a Marketplace that’s closed “until further notice” tells you this is a mess they’re still untangling. And their reminder that “nobody will be banned for spending credits received” is them trying to placate a player base that’s probably pretty nervous right now.
Winners and Losers
So who loses here? Obviously, Ubisoft and the Siege team. Their holiday period is ruined, and they’re facing a massive engineering and PR cleanup. The players lose, stuck with queues and potentially missing items. But look at the bigger competitive landscape. This is a gift to other tactical shooters. When a core game in a genre has a catastrophic failure, even temporarily, players look for alternatives. Games like Valorant or even Counter-Strike 2 could see a bump from frustrated Siege fans. The real test is how many of those players come back after Ubisoft fixes the servers. If the rollback is messy or items are lost for good, that trust is hard to rebuild. And in live-service, trust is the real currency.
The Long Road Back
Ubisoft’s communication, like their posts on X, has been careful. They’re promising “extensive quality control tests” and handling it with “extreme care.” But there‘s a gap between that cautious messaging and the reality players see: a status page lit up with red “outage” icons. Basically, they’re telling you it’s fixed, but the system is screaming that it’s not. That disconnect is almost as damaging as the hack itself. It makes you wonder about the underlying architecture. How did a third-party get that level of control? And if it happened once, what’s stopping it from happening again? The soft launch was a smart move, but the persistent issues show this was a system-wide failure. Getting the servers online is step one. Convincing players the foundation is solid again? That’s the real mission.
