Rainbow Six Siege now auto-bans players for bigotry
Try not being racist in chat, maybe?
We've known for a while that Ubisoft have been trying to curb toxicity in Rainbow Six Siege, but their latest phase in their war against awful people brightened up my weekend. The popular tactical FPS now automatically and immediately issues short-term bans for racist and homophobic slurs in text-chat.
The ban system is simple enough. On your first offence, you get a half-hour suspension from the game. A good warning and a fairly mild slap on the wrist, all things considered. Do it again and you're out of the game for two hours. Same with the third. Any offences beyond that will attract the angry gaze of the game's moderation staff and put you at risk of a permanent account ban, according to the official Siege code of conduct.
Here's the tweet that kicked it all off last Friday night, confirming Ubisoft's stance on the matter:
The move was broadly praised by a number of game developers, including XCOM designer Jake Solomon who tweeted that "This should be an industry standard." Surprising nobody, the Rainbow Six Reddit thread accompanying the studio's announcement includes some people very upset they can't use slurs anymore.