Rumors about the secret workings of Ubisoft's latest Rainbow Six Siege anti-cheat system are beginning to give the Internet an aura of heroism to the new tactic, and spreading on Twitter (open in new tab) is the devil that Ubisoft is doing is as simple as that: by updating the "Rainbow Six Siege" executable every two hours, the claim is that they are forcing cheat makers to keep up with endless changes that would break the cheat.

While there is reason to doubt the specifics of that explanation, one anti-cheat expert told PC Gamer that this is actually a viable anti-cheat method. And even if "Siege" is not actually being reborn every two hours, something similar may be happening.

Ubisoft announced last week (opens in new tab) that it was testing a new anti-cheat technology on PC, but the company did not say how it works so as not to give the cheat makers any hints The basis for the "new build every two hours" claim is a cheat maker forum posts and SteamDB logs show that the Steam files for "Rainbow Six Siege" are updated with alarming frequency.

However, one poster on that cheat maker forum explains the system differently: Ubisoft is not sending every Siege player a new executable every two hours, but created a large number of unique executables a few weeks ago, began distributing them to players at random. The principle is similar: make life difficult for professional cheat makers, as each customer may have a slightly different version of the game; Siege's data administrator also says this is happening (opens in new tab).

Paul Chamberlain, former anti-cheat leader at Valorant and now head of a start-up game studio called New Avalon (opens in new tab), told me that the idea of a new build every two hours is a "decent strategy," but "it would be really time It would be really time-consuming for the developers."

"I don't think you see this approach from game developers very often because of the operational complexity, but it could be effective," Chamberlain said.

"Even if it doesn't completely prevent cheats, it makes them harder and more expensive to create, and it raises the bar for the skills needed for new cheat developers to work on the game.

But if you want to be thorough, it would be even better to give each player their own personal version. Because "it would require maximum effort for the cheat developers to keep up," Chamberlain says, and while it's tempting to imagine a RainbowSix.exe factory that spits out a new version every two hours, the other explanation seems more likely in that context: Ubisoft created a large number of unique Siege builds (if not enough to make one for each player) and distributed them randomly.

Both ideas are simple and appealing. The cheaters will keep picking your locks" just throw new locks at them until they are buried in locks. You don't have to be technically savvy to understand it, and it sounds like a cisplicit punishment for the cheat makers. Unfortunately, the cheat developers can write tools to help them adapt, so no matter what Ubisoft does, it won't be the one simple trick that stops them forever, Chamberlain says. (Ubisoft says it is "confident" in the new anti-cheat method developed in recent months. However, the system reportedly broke Siege's stat tracker, and Ubisoft has not said whether such benign third-party overlays will be available in the future. The publisher has already said that it will not reveal specifics on how to prevent cheats, but has asked for comment on the overlay issue.