In a rather comic twist to Ubisoft’s efforts to reign in toxic behavior on its flagship Rainbow Six Siege multiplayer servers, players are using the hate speech detecting chat monitor to coax players into getting banned.
The no-nonsense automated temporary banning system went live on Thursday and issues non-contestable and instantaneous automatic bans to players who stray too far from correct in-game chat etiquette by using ‘any language or content deemed illegal, dangerous, threatening, abusive, obscene, vulgar, defamatory, hateful, racist, sexist, ethically offensive or constituting harassment’. Though the slurs still appear on screen, players are immediately booted from the game.
Ubisoft explained in a blog covering toxicity back in April that it will track 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’. First time offenders get a slap on the wrist and a 30 minute ban from playing R6 in any shape or form. Commit a second or third offense, and the ban grows to 2 hours. From there, an investigation is launched, potentially leading to a permanent ban.
Affected players have complained the system is far too draconian, with a cut and dry approach to offensive text. Ubisoft’s response to the complaints are pure gold with certain offenders receiving snappy one word retorts, as seen below. The majority of players are, however, in favor of the new system and are congratulating Ubisoft of taking a hard line in this instance.
Good.
— Rainbow Six Siege (@Rainbow6Game) July 13, 2018
Now, more conniving, or depending on how you see it, more clever players are using the system to taunt others into banning themselves by inciting the use of forbidden words. Over on Reddit, a few select participants have revealed various baiting exploits in all their glory.
To give the tricksters their due, the bigoted oafs would have blurted out an offensive word at some point anyway. There’s a poetic justice to seeing the instant ban of a toxic player when they step over that all-too-familiar line. The only issue is relying on the tactic to reduce the number of players in the opposing team.
