Ubisoft's plans to tackle toxicity in Rainbow Six: Siege Permanent bans, mute text chat, chat filtering and team kill detection all in the works

James Batchelor UK Editor Thursday 5th April 2018 Share this article Share

Companies in this article Ubisoft

Ubisoft is the latest major game firm to ramp up its efforts to crackdown on negative behaviour in its multiplayer games.

A blog post on the Rainbow Six: Siege website details the company's current plans to deal with the toxicity spreading through the community.

A mix of short-term changes and long-term goals are listed, with Ubisoft ultimately hoping to "track negative player behaviour, manage those that behave poorly, and eventually implement features that will encourage players to improve their behaviour."

Most immediately, the publisher reiterated that it is currently tracking any "racial and homophobic slurs" used by individual players, issuing bans on those users depending on the severity.

Players who repeatedly use such terms face bans of two, seven or fifteen days, with permanent blocks used against the most extreme offenders. Ubisoft stresses that this is not a strict progression system, adding: "Particularly egregious offenders can be permananetly banned without a warning [ban] being applied beforehand."

During the course of Rainbow Six: Siege's third-year second season, the publisher hopes to address the increasingly common issue of intentional team killing. Ubisoft aims to track long-term offenders that slip through the current detection system and use this to improve its methods.

By the end of season three, Ubisoft hopes to have implemented the ability for players to mute text and/or voice chat from individual users that offend them. The Rainbow Six team is also wroking on an automated system to censor text chat, which in turn will help identify users who repeatedly send offensive messages.

"These short-term changes will begin to address toxicity, but we do not plan to stop there," the team wrote. "We are serious about tackling the issues surrounding the potential for a negative player experience, and we will share any further changes with you prior to their implementation."