Starting this week, Ubisoft plans to issue permanent bans for Rainbow Six Siege‘s most toxic players, according to a recent announcement on the game’s subreddit.
Illustration: Ubisoft
“We will be implementing an improvement on the system we have been using to ban players that use racial and homophobic slurs, or hate speech, in game,” Craig Robinson, one of the game’s community developers, wrote. The bans will last anywhere from two days to life depending on the severity of the player’s actions, and will be accompanied by a global message displayed in the game that the user has been “banned for toxicity”.
“This is our first step towards managing toxicity in Rainbow Six Siege, and we will have more information to share about our other plans at a later date,” the post concluded. Threatening, obscene and defamatory language, including hate speech, has always been against the game’s Code of Conduct for online play, but this latest announcement shows that Ubisoft is getting more serious about punishing players who violate it.
While Rainbow Six Siege has seen its online player base continue to grow as annual updates add new characters and maps, its online community has a notorious toxicity problem. Negative or abusive players have been a perennial topic in the game’s forums, Steam discussion boards and subreddit, with many players calling on Ubisoft to implement a better system for curbing rampant negative player behaviours such as killing other players on the same team and ridiculing or spouting epithets at players perceived to be making mistakes. While this system of bans doesn’t directly address the issue of the team killing, Robinson added in a separate comment that addressing this issue is not a “low priority” for the game’s development team.
“Siege needs a player punishment system badly, player kicking can be easily abused and there aren’t really any other systems in place to prevent toxic players,” wrote one player on the game’s subreddit last month. “With Operation Outbreak coming, there will be an influx of new players and having a system to prevent toxic players will keep players from leaving the game and being turned off by the community.”
The new system appears to be a direct response to complaints like this. While the game recently added a reporting system for players to highlight bad actors, the ban system outlined above show punishments won’t consist of just a slap on the wrist. It’s a topic the head of Xbox, Phil Spencer, recently touched on in a keynote address at this year’s DICE Summit, where he argued that addressing toxic behaviour in online play should be a high priority for everyone in the video game industry.
While issuing stricter bans might help improve things, it remains to be seen what other actions Ubisoft has in mind to continue combating harassment and toxic behaviour in the game.
Comments
12 responses to “Ubisoft Cracks Down On Hate Speech In Rainbow Six Siege”
mmmmmmmmmm……….. I don’t see this as a good thing TBH. Who determines what is and is not hate speech? How broad are the terms being used?
Someone calling someone else a Noob, for example, can be considered abusive, but it can also be considered a joke. Hell, ANYTHING that gets said on the internet could be either, and to have an automatic thing in place to work that out is a bit daft. I think something more like what LoL ha (at least on USA servers) would be much better, where if you are reported so many times, you go to the player jury.
“Any language or content deemed illegal, dangerous, threatening, abusive, obscene, vulgar, defamatory, hateful, racist, sexist, ethically offensive or constituting harassment is forbidden. This includes use of the above on the forums, via the in-game chat, or over VOIP.”
It’s their game and their comms service so that can enforce it any way they wish. It’s quite plain that calling someone a noob is not what constitutes hate speech, but it would form part of you being banned for harassment if you were a player that verballed everyone in the game you perceived as being bad.
Wow, you have not played League since S3.
Sorry to say buckeroo, but League has had automatic phrase/word detection in for years that does automatic chat restrictions/bans and the player tribunal has been long dead. Most of the chat restrictions and/or bans are automatic. Hell you can get away with inting now if you do a couple of things to throw off the auto detector
That’s good. Honestly, hate speech is just uncreative sledging. I remember back in the earlier days of online play there wasn’t so much hate speech being thrown around and instead it was clever and cheeky stuff that just managed to get under your skin
Just like trolling the art has been lost.
How about they focus on something more important than this non issue like i dunno the sheer number of hackers or the fact that a defender can get outside and kill half the attacking team in their spawn before being identified as being outside.
I’d rather deal with occasional hackers who can be hard to catch than with persistent hate speech or bullying from players who are easy to monitor and enforce the game’s policy on.
The latter is not an issue, in plat people run out all the time, but rarely get a kill.
There are also not that many hackers anymore, I think you might just need to touch up on your skills man.
Not sure what game you think your talking about, but 90% of Casual games its the plat players do the run outs and scum rushes and the higher gold rank into plats you play on “comp” it becomes more common.
And if you think there aren’t many hackers you obviously don’t play enough, we see one a day minimum, and i’m not talking Pulse players or head glitching ash’s, i’m talking 100% track you through the map ESP wallers and teleporters.
But obviously you know more about what i see when i play the game so don’t let me keep you from believing your own drivel.
Rush out only works if the Attacking team isn’t ready for it. Exactly like spawn peaking. The defenders should always prevent the Attackers from entering the building. Luckily the attackers actually have the advantage of Assault Rifles, DMRs and gadgets to assist them against peaking and spawn rushes.
Hacking while, annoying isn’t nearly as bad as it once was.
I am plat 4, I see defenders push outside all the time hoping to catch someone not being careful, but there is only one map I can think of that give so little cover that you an be shot before finding somewhere safe (Consulate due to low external walls). Otherwise even the notorious rear bank spawn is easily defended these days.
I see maybe one hacker a week in ranked and I never see the same person multiple times.
Unless both statements are only prevalent in casuals (which I don’t play due to me being matched against low level unranked players isn’t fun for anyone), I think you are talking shit.
Not to mention that community and code are two completely different departments. I don’t think hacking is that bad myself, but the company can do both. It’s not like they go “OK programmers, I need you to go on the forums and in game comms today and then enforce the code of conduct”.