Rainbow Six Siege Update 1.08 Is Live on PS4 & Xbox One, Here's What Changed

Previously expected next week, then bumped up to yesterday, then delayed to today, Rainbow Six Siege update 1.08 is now available to download on PlayStation 4 and Xbox One following some scheduled maintenance.

Roughly a 750MB download, bringing the total size of all Siege updates to over 3.5GB, 1.08 is designed to “ensure a solid competitive experience before the start of the Rainbow Six Pro League.” In the patch notes below, you’ll find details on cheating countermeasures, spawn killing changes, bug fixes, and more:

New Features

Community Health: Cheating Countermeasures

Addition of a Report Button

We have added a Report Button feature in order to empower the community. This will allow players to flag suspicious behaviors. Those reports will feed directly to our cheating counter-measures to increase their effectiveness.

Introduction of Kill Cam to Ranked

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. 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. 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. 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.

Playlist Changes

New Custom Game setting: Infinite Overtime Rounds is now available for competitive play

It is important for us to provide options to the competitive scene. Therefore, we have added the option to go into infinite overtime in Custom Games. 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. This ensures the fairest outcome to a match (since our game is asymmetric).

General Tweaks & Improvements

Balance: Spawn Killing Countermeasures

Spawning Location Tweaks

We have altered multiple spawn positions and covers within spawning location areas in order to ensure that players spawning within them are protected from the Defenders. We believe these tweaks should fix the vast majority of those spawn killing occurrences. We will keep monitoring further to ensure that our spawn locations are safe for Attackers on all maps. For the full detailed list of those tweaks as well as pictures illustrating them, see the bottom, please scroll to the bottom of this post.

Main Bug Fixes

Gameplay Fixes

Operators are in T-Pose and do not display any texture.

Hit registration: the player sometimes doesn’t receive damage when shot at while in rappel and using a drone.

Hit registration: Players sometime take no damage when shot in one of their feet.

Hit registration: Defenders have a difficult time damaging a hostage carrier while he or she is in rappel.

Weapons sometime appear through walls.

The drone sometimes flies out of bounds when thrown.

Sometimes drone falls off the maps.

Gadgets placed on the ground cannot be put on top of barricade debris.

The ADS animation sometimes gets corrupted when shield-wielding Operators aim.

Thermite: sometimes, a reinforced trap door will not be destroyed by an Exothermic Charge.

Buck: Pressing the gadget key while holding secondary weapon does not go out of Skeleton key mode.

Glaz: pressing the gadget key while carrying secondary weapon does not switch scope ON and OFF.

Sledge: hammer can be seen floating in the air during end of round camera.

Level Design Fixes

Yacht – exploit: players are able to vault near the roof of the front end of the Yacht, inside the ceiling.

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.

Yacht: Defenders cannot place barbed wire on any interior stairs of the map.

Yacht: drones have no collision with a block of ice at East Glacier.

Yacht: some red blocking walls not displayed during the Preparation Phase.

Oregon – exploit: Attackers can shoot Defenders through a small gap (near Junkyard Spawn Point, EXT Dining Hall).

Oregon: drones have difficulty navigating through the two ventilation shafts near the abandoned school bus.

Chalet: an invisible collision will prevent characters from shooting at enemies hiding behind it on the 2F near the railing.

House: players can fall through the map when rappelling near the River Docks area.

House: pillows have no collision with the players’ gadgets.

Russian Café: the bottom layer of the destructible wall from the Pillar Dining Room cannot be vaulted after destroying the wall.

Sometimes, there are lighting issues on maps.

Spectator Mode Fixes

The score is not replicated correctly for the spectator during character selection screen.

When spectating, the spectator remains with a white screen if the spectated target is killed while being flashed.

Spectator sees player’s drone from the wrong perspective.

Indication of drone elevation in relation to player does not work correctly when in Spectator Mode

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.

Graphic corruptions can be seen when switching between players in first person view.

Players’ full usernames no longer displayed under their logo when focused on in Spectator Mode

Controller does not vibrate after exiting from spectate mode and playing in any mode.

PC: The spectator cannot open the Options menu using the F10 key.

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.

PS4: PS4 players met feature from the friends tab in the play station dynamic menu has no functionality.

The next Rainbow Six Siege expansion is expected in April 2016, with details TBA.

Save up to 30% on R6 Credits! Get new operators and more faster with R6 Credits. Sale runs March 1 through March 8. pic.twitter.com/jH2NX5oxyQ

— Rainbow Six (@Rainbow6Game) March 3, 2016

[Source: Ubisoft, Rainbow Six Siege (Twitter), Reddit]

Essential Reading:

Hidden Gems 2016 Feature 1.12.16

Meet the Hidden Gems of 2016
Abzû — Release Date: TBA 2016

Giant Squid has set sights on a 2016 release for its upcoming PS4 console exclusive, Abzû. It was founded by Matt Nava, the esteemed art director that presided over two of thatgamecompany’s indie gems in Journey and Flower, but perhaps the studio’s game that Abzû bears the biggest resemblance to is Flow in that it takes the plunge into the deep blue.

At its core, Abzû is a stylized diving simulator, mixing together serene exploration and light RPG elements. On paper, PlayStation VR support seems inevitable further down the line, but even based on the aesthetic and Nava’s involvement alone, Abzû is bubbling to the surface as one of our most-anticipated games of the year.
Hyper Light Drifter — Release Date: Q2 2016

Nostalgia is a cruel mistress at times. Remember replaying childhood classics in the vein of The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past only to find that they don’t quite hold up to your own personal expectations? Heart Machine is nurturing a workaround with its upcoming Kickstarter darling, Hyper Light Drifter.

A prolonged development may have cooled excitement for the studio’s multi-platform release (largely due to the health issues that have afflicted Lead Developer Alex Preston), but by infusing the rich gameplay elements associated with Diablo and The Legend of Zelda series, Hyper Light Drifter is a love letter to the 8-bit and 16-bit games of yesteryear in every which way. With zero spoken dialog, the creative team at Heart Machine is promising a story that will be told through music and visuals — and what visuals they are.
Boundless — Release Date: TBA 2016

Minecraft may have cemented the concept as a bankable formula for success, though the idea of building and maintaining your own pixelated home in a sandbox universe is still a tantalizing pitch for a game. Case in point: Wonderstruck’s upcoming open world title Boundless.

Hosting cross-platform play between PS4 and PC, Boundless will have all players inhabiting the same lush universe online when it launches later this year. Each world is intricately connected, too, with budding explorers able to hop through a portal into an entirely new planet. Moreover, these diverse environments are all guarded by an ancient titan; apex predators that require careful teamwork to topple if you are to harvest their precious resources.

Indeed Wonderstruck has claimed that Boundless is as much about writing your own story through exploration and interactions with other characters than anything else. Guess we ought to mark this one down as another universe we can lose ourselves in later this year.
Firewatch — Release Date: February 9, 2016

Arguably the prettiest indie headed to PlayStation 4 this year is Campo Santo’s debut title, Firewatch. Orbiting around Henry, a lonesome firefighter protecting the lush Shoshone Forest in ’89, the studio’s visually striking first-person adventure title has you exploring the rolling hills of the Wyoming wilderness, all the while trying to piece together an unsolved mystery as strange occurrences begin to rear their head.

VR support may be ruled out, and the core story driving Firewatch may only last for six hours, but we can imagine losing ourselves in Campo Santo’s PS4 console exclusive for much, much longer.
Manifold Garden — Release Date: TBA 2016

Prepare for some cerebral puzzles with Manifold Garden. The exploration puzzle game formerly known as Relativity is coming by way of independent developer William Chyr. If Monument Valley took cues from the architectural genius of M.C. Escher, then Manifold Garden ups the ante quite considerably, presenting a series of intricate puzzles that are, perplexingly, all connected to one another.

Unfolding like one giant piece of origami, Chyr has hinted at players being able to explore cerebral architectural riddles in a world “where physics is turned upside down.” Cue the inevitable Inception “BRRAAAAWWRWRRMRMRMMM!”
Dreams — Release Date: TBA

What’s the most resilient parasite? An idea, according to Christopher Nolan, but it’s also the core theme underpinning Media Molecule’s bold new IP, Dreams. While it’s still without a release date at the time of writing, a beta test has been slated for 2016 which ought to give us a clearer look under the hood of the studio’s most intriguing PS4 experiences.

During PSX 2015, our own Chandler Wood was flabbergasted at the unbridled creativity that Dreams offers, with the official logline from Media Molecule describing the game as so: "We’re building a place where you can go to explore the dreams of others, and then you can create your own.”

Exciting, yet enigmatic, and while Sony still has a long way to go before convincing the masses of the title’s potential, we’re hoping that this year’s beta will shed light on Media Molecule’s most peculiar title to date. All we need now is a good dream architect…And that is the third and final Inception reference, we promise.
What Remains of Edith Finch — TBA 2016

Based on the wonderful and serene The Unfinished Swan alone, Giant Sparrow’s follow-up, What Remains of Edith Finch, earns a place on this list from the off. But there’s a ominous tinge to the studio’s sophomore effort that distinguishes it from the coming-of-age story of Monroe. In exploring the dark corners of the Finch family, the developer’s generation-spanning tale centers on Edith as she begins to peel back the layers of history shrouding her family name.

As the last Finch left alive, there’s an abundance of mystery ready to be solved in Edith Finch’s narrative, and if Giant Sparrow carries over the touching and charming elements from Unfinished Swan then we could have another indie darling on our hands.
Yooka-Laylee — October 2016

First pitched as a spiritual successor to Banjo-Kazooie, Playtonic Games’ all-new adventure title Yooka-Laylee became the Kickstarter success story of 2015, breaking through all expectations to reach $3.2 million and make crowdfunding history.

Quite the feat, no doubt, but now comes the hard part: delivering on that vision. Having already plucked former Rare employees to join its ranks, Playtonic is crafting an old-school “collectathon” 3D platformer that intends to resurrect a genre that abruptly fell off a cliff in the late ‘90s.

Of course, it’s too soon to gauge whether Yooka-Laylee can emulate its own Kickstarter success upon release, though we’re confident that the creative team behind the N64 love letter can nurture the quirky chameleon and “wisecracking” bat into bona fide mascots.