The French gamer who called in a fake hostage situation at the Ubisoft Montreal office in 2020, for revenge over a Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six: Siege ban, was sentenced to 3 years in French prison.
This news comes from Dexerto, who announced on Twitter that the gamer, Yanni Ouahioune who goes by ‘Y4nnOXX’, is notorious cheater who swatted the Ubisoft office. Ouahioune was sentenced to three years in a French prison. The Dexerto quotes the Montreal Gazette, “According to the Montreal Gazette, the trial was split into three separate cases including the situation that unfolded in the Canadian city. The court ruled that Ouahioune will be sentenced to three years and will need to “compensate” his victim accordingly. He is also required to undergo self-help work and either start working or get training to be able to do so.”
Along with this, it was also reported in the Montreal Gazette that Ouahioune was getting psychological treatment for years prior to these events. The way he made this swatting was through Russian cellular services through his own computer, located in his mother’s home. This is not the first time that he has done this.
Both Dexerto and The Montreal Gazette explain that Ouahioune made DDoS attacks, which are cyber attacks intended to bring down servers temporarily or disrupt access to such servers, on government ran offices, as well as making threats to the developers of Minecraft. The result of this was that he pleaded guilty to these and was sentenced in June for the DDoS and threats.
Ubisoft Montreal’s Director of External Communications Magali Valence, commented to Montreal Gazette saying that they stand with the court’s decision and to stand with their employees who were affected by this. Valance also noted, “Out of respect for our employees who were affected by this event, we will not comment further.” This is not the first time events like this occurred. Back in December 2017, swatting over a Call of Duty match resulted in a Kansas man getting shot and killed by Police, and in 2022, a Twitch streamer threatened to shoot Twitch staff at the headquarters in Los Angeles.