The first quarter of Ubisoft's 2018-19 fiscal year was a very good one for the company—a record-setter, in fact. Ubi reported sales of €400 million ($466 million) for the quarter, driven primarily by continued growth of digital sales and "player recurring investment" [PRI] in "digital items, DLC, season passes, subscriptions, and advertising."

"We had a record first quarter, which exceeded our expectations. This performance was fueled by steady growth for our back-catalog and an excellent momentum for PRI, once again confirming the increasingly recurring profile of our business and the ever-greater success of our digital transformation," Ubisoft CEO Yves Guillemot said. Back-catalog net bookings reached €333 million ($388 million) over the quarter, an increase of nearly 75 percent that represents 87.2 percent of total net bookings. 

Ubi's future is looking pretty bright too: "Our teams are continuing to deliver on our strategic plan of ramping up our franchises. Assassin’s Creed Odyssey and The Division 2 were very well received at E3, confirming their full potential in a highly competitive environment. Our new creation, Skull & Bones, also made a very good impression due to its innovative gameplay combining naval battles with a multi-player experience." 

And of course we don't want to overlook the PC's role in all of this: PC sales accounted for 24 percent of Ubisoft's total for the quarter, up from 21 percent of the first-quarter total in 2017-18 and behind only the PlayStation 4, which accounted for 38 percent of sales (down from 44 percent in Q1 2017-18). The Xbox One, which barely edged out the PC last year, came in third this time around, accounting for 22 percent of sales by platform.

It's not the first time that PC sales have surpassed Xbox One—in the first quarter of Ubi's 2016-17 fiscal, the PC notched 26 percent of sales versus 23 percent on the Xbox One—but the Xbox 360 was more of a factor then, too, claiming 3 percent of sales by platform. This time out, the 360, PlayStation 3, Nintendo Wii, and Wii U collectively accounted for just one percent of by-platform sales.

Note: This story contains a video and image that uses homophobic and racist slurs. Dropping hate speech in Rainbow Six Siege now comes with automatic consequences. Since yesterday, dozens of players have been saying that they received an automatic instant ban after using a racist or homophobic slur in text chat. Ubisoft has confirmed to PC Gamer via email that a new banning system is live in Siege.  

These bans seem to last for 27 minutes on first instance, and prevent playing any aspect of Siege, including Terrorist Hunt or custom games. Upon second and third offense, the ban increases to 2 hours. After the third offense, an official investigation into the account is conducted that could lead to a permanent ban, per the Siege Code of Conduct. 

Asked about the ban on Twitter, Ubisoft referred to a post in its dev blog from April that addressed toxicity. Back then, Ubi promised several features coming this year, like muting text chat and enhanced chat monitoring for abusive language. A chat filter was also promised with an estimated arrival for Season 3, but the feature set is a bit different than what is in place today.

“Our team is working on the creation of an automated system that will censor text chat in game based on a chat filter list. This will replace words that have been identified as offensive and provide players with a notification that their language was found to be unacceptable. We will also be tracking the number of times players trigger this filter and will take action as necessary for players that are intentionally having a negative impact on other player’s gaming experience,” Ubi wrote in the April post.

As seen in the video below by Redditor EMU4, the current system doesn’t appear to censor the slur used or hide it to players, but immediately after typing it the player receives a ban and is removed from the match.

Some have praised Ubi’s efforts to curb hate speech, while others expressed anger that their favorite words are now off-limits. “Just wanted to say I’ve watched a few people get banned right in front of my eyes! It’s beautiful!” Reddit user TheDeaves said in a post on the front page of the Siege subreddit. 

The Rainbow Six Siege team has revealed patch notes for its current test server, and they come with a wide array of balance changes across the attacking side. The test server is live today with these changes as of 1 PM EDT.

One of Siege’s strongest operators, Finka, is buffed further on the test server, with her inconsistent flashbang grenades being swapped out for the more powerful frag grenades, and she’s now less vulnerable to one of her biggest counters—Smoke. Operators under the effects of one of Finka’s nano boosts now only take 50% more damage from Smoke’s canisters, rather than double damage. As of last season, Finka was one of the most effective operators in the game, but her pick rate at high level was still lacking. While this change will certainly up her pickrate, further buffing one of the strongest operators in the game doesn’t seem like a good idea to me.

IQ and Blackbeard, meanwhile, are nerfed. IQ is losing her frag grenades in favour of a claymore, and the range on her scanner is being decreased from 20 metres to 15. IQ’s main utility comes from her solid guns, frag grenades and high speed rather than from her situational gadget. Without frags to rely on she may have to change roles from a speedy entry fragger to a slower, intel based operator, using her gadget to remove utility from the defending side, which seems more in line with her original role within a team.

Blackbeard's shield is getting weaker, down to 50 HP from 60 HP, but he also receives a slight speed buff while his shield is equipped. While this may not seem like much, it lowers the number of shots required to break the shield across many defender weapons. This could mean that instead of being forced to aim well and land shots on Blackbeard’s unprotected body, players can now just blast away at his head and get a relatively similar time to kill. Forcing a camping Blackbeard off a window, where his shield can cover him nearly completely, becomes plausible rather than near-impossible. This change probably won’t affect higher levels of play as much though, which are more dominated by one-shot headshots, where Blackbeard’s shield still offers a significant advantage. 

A smaller change is coming to Dokkaebi, with her claymore being swapped out for flashbangs. The claymore offers less utility than her smoke grenades anyway, which are more useful for cutting off important lines of sight in the objective. Flash grenades might see some use for disabling players whose location has been revealed by her phone calls, but I doubt that they’ll provide more overall use to the team than smoke grenades.

Obviously these operator tweaks could change or be abandoned before they reach Siege itself, but they indicate what Ubisoft considers to be worthy of testing. Also coming in the test server are a variety of smaller changes and bugfixes. Check them out yourself on the official Reddit post, or on the test server itself which is currently live.

In response to a recent wave of new cheating tactics in Rainbow Six Siege, Ubisoft has laid out its plans to bolster their anti-cheat efforts moving forward. Most notably, following in the footsteps of CS:GO, plans are in the works to require two-factor authentication for all players wanting to play Ranked.

Reports of an increase in hackers and cheaters started boiling up in the community near the launch of Operation Para Bellum last month. Siege Youtubers complained that hackers were showing up more and more in high-ranked matches and exploiting the game in new ways, like defenders teleporting to the attacker spawn at the beginning of the round. Ubisoft had been made no public statement on the issue until today.

According to the devs, one unspecified exploit has been corrected today through a hotfix. They have also improved their “internal penetration testing efforts,” meaning they hope to be able to catch more exploits in the future before they are seen in-game.

On July 16, Ubi will launch a ban wave for about 600 players that it says have taken advantage of boosting services. Boosting refers to when players hire hackers to squad up with them to rank up. Rainbow Six Siege currently awards in-game weapon charms at the end of each season to players based on their rank. A few weeks ago, Ubi updated their official Code of Conduct to make boosting a bannable offense. 

Other options are also being explored by the devs to increase match integrity and counter boosting, like limiting MMR disparity between squadmates in Ranked. This would mean a Bronze player potentially couldn’t play with their Platinum friend. Despite the inconvenience, many other competitive games like Overwatch already implement a similar system. The post also briefly touches on plans to improve the reporting options in-game, which are currently limited to a simple “report toxic behavior” button. Another option they’re looking at is to negate the MMR loss or gains in matches where a cheater was present.

No concrete date was given for any of these new security standards, but the two-factor authentication requirements are already in testing, so this might be the first change to reach players.

VIDEO: A closer look at the new items for IQ, Lesion, and Dokkaebi.

Ubisoft added 12 special summer skins to Rainbow Six Siege as part of a limited "Sunsplash Collection." Every player should see two packs waiting for them when they log into the game next. 

The skin can otherwise only be purchased with Siege's real-money currency, cannot be earned through the normal drop system, and are only available until July 17. This is the second such temporary cosmetic pack, following the Outbreak packs we saw earlier this year. 

Siege's art department continues to grapple with how irreverent they can be with themed cosmetics. There are a few truly ridiculous skins in the game—clown ballistic masks, Luchador headgear, bits of medieval armor flare... but mostly the look of Siege's cosmetics is restrained and tactical. Would this stuff be better if it was more cartoony, like Overwatch, or should Ubisoft keep it more sleek and serious? In any case, Dokkaebi's "Scuba Six" wetsuit is the standout for me.

As a Lesion main on defense, I'm happy to see him get any new cosmetic options but also disappointed that they double-down on his Cargo Shorts Dad persona, which I'm desperate to shed. 

The whole collection is 2700 R6 Credits, which translates to about $23, depending on how you purchase Siege's cash currency.

I've put 400 hours into Rainbow Six Siege. This weekend, a teammate said something I've never heard before:

"Hey, will one of you guys please play Tachanka?"

If you've been following our coverage of Rainbow Six's 'Lord and Savior,' you'll know that Tachanka is not considered the best operator in Rainbow Six Siege. By Ubisoft's own data, at some skill levels, he was the least-picked defender by a long shot in Year Two Season Three (Q3 2017). In March at the Game Developers Conference, Ubisoft said it didn't have plans to rework the character.

 But my teammate's request was serious: against all reason, we needed a Tachanka. As we got into the match, they explained why, describing a technique that sounded so ridiculous that I was convinced they were trolling. "Get on and off Tachanka's turret like five or six times, and you'll get a speed boost," the teammate promised.

A line formed around the static MG. Spending precious time in setup phase, operators hopped on and off the turret, toggling control of it several times in quick succession. They emerged from the gun, as promised, quicker than before, both in base movement speed and when sprinting. The heaviest defenders, like Doc and Rook, were noticeably quicker—as fast as an Ash or an Ela.

Speed and armor are trade-offs in Siege: fast operators have smaller hitboxes, but are fragile, and heavier ones can take an extra bullet or two but are bulkier. This exploit allows any defender (but particularly the three-armor defenders like Rook) to have the best of both worlds. 

Based on YouTube video history, the exploit seems to have been in Siege for at least a week. It's definitely an unfair advantage, but it hasn't been game-breaking for me personally—so many of Siege's gunfights happen while standing or laying still, particularly for defenders. The main issue here is how easy it is to execute this glitch: it works reliably and takes seconds to explain to a teammate. Hopefully we'll see a hotfix soon.