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Rainbow Six Siege’s most problematic defender, Clash, has had to be temporarily removed from the game. This is the third time the operator has been deactivated in 10 months.
Ubisoft announced the deactivation of Clash on both its Twitter feed and on Reddit. “We are deactivating Clash today,” the developer said. “We have become aware of an exploit, and have decided to deactivate Clash. As such, Clash will not be available for play until we have resolved the issue.”
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Official details about the glitch have not been announced, but video evidence uploaded to YouTube shows that other team members can fire their weapons through Clash’s body-length shield. As Clash’s shield is impenetrable, it effectively turns a duo of Clash and another defender into a bulletproof turret.
This isn’t the first time Clash has caused a problem in Siege. Back in May she had to be removed from the game due to a glitch that allowed Clash to fire through her fully extended shield with her primary weapon. This problem took a long time to resolve, with Clash finally returning to the game in July. A few months later in December, however, Clash was once again removed due to a bug that made it appear as if she had her shield extended when she actually had her primary weapon drawn.
Clash was released in September 2018, meaning in just over a year she’s had three major issues. For anyone who spent money to acquire the operator, it has meant having to endure weeks of being unable to use her. Overall, Clash has been a source of frequent frustration to Siege players.
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At this point, it does seem that Clash’s design may be fundamentally flawed. It’s hard to think of another operator that has caused such a headache to both the developers and players. It may be that Clash has to be reworked and given a different kit, akin to what is being done to Tachanka. At the recent Six Invitational, Jean-Baptiste Hallé, lead game designer for Rainbow Six Siege, explained that the development team does intend to rework operators over the next two years.
“If you regularly look at our graphs when we release our notes, if you look at the operators who have the lowest pick rate and highest frustrations, you'll have a pretty good idea of who may be on our watch list,” Hallé told IGN.
On an episode of the Rainbow Six-focused Hot Breach podcast from last year, Ubisoft showed off numerous graphs demonstrating player frustration with every operator. The defense graph clearly shows Clash as the most frustrating. Based on what Hallé explained at the Six Invitational, it seems there is a high chance that Clash will be reworked at some point during Year 5 or Year 6 of Siege.
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Matt Purslow is IGN's UK News and Entertainment Writer. You can follow him on Twitter.