Rainbow Six Siege Starts Insta-Banning Players For Hate Speech

Ubisoft has just upped the ante in their fight against what it labels toxic behavior. Players are now receiving instant, automated bans for using racial slurs and other offensive language.

One took to twitter to complain about his ban for saying the word 'nibba' in text chat:

The automated ban kicks in instantly once a forbidden word or phrase is uttered, disconnecting the offending player from their current match and preventing them from playing any game mode, even custom games, for 27 minutes. Second and third offenses increase the banned time to 2 hours. Additional offenses trigger an official investigation into the and could lead to a permanent ban.

Ubisoft first outlined their intentions on this issue in a dev blog titled Toxicity, published on April 4, 2018. That post promised a mute function and chat filters. One wonders why the same set of phrases that Ubisoft currently bans players for couldn't simply be added to an automated chat filter, a popular anti-toxicity feature which has already been in use for decades.

“Any language or content deemed illegal, dangerous, threatening, abusive, obscene, vulgar, defamatory, hateful, racist, sexist, ethically offensive or constituting harassment is forbidden.”

-Ubisoft

Needless to say, this system is already causing issues. One example comes from reddit jjkauffman who was tricked into typing the word fag:

I was just playing a ranked match when someone said in the chat, "What's the British term for a cigarette?", I fell for it and typed "They call it a fag". Got hit with that 26 minute ban as well. Waited for my ban to end, tried queuing again, and got immediately hit with a message "Fairfight - You have been permanently suspended from multiplayer."

No comment yet on why Ubisoft feels exposure to racial or homophobic words is more dangerous, threatening, obscene, vulgar, hateful, or ethically offensive than playing a video game where the only objective is to murder opponents with high powered assault weapons.

Update: Another reddit was banned for stating his own ethnicity:

I was talking to a teammate in chat earlier and he asked me “what is your nationality” I told him “I’m paki” within 2 seconds I got banned for 26 minutes. This is just great the ban system it’s self is racist not the players. This game will be dead in no time.

Further Reading: Ubisoft Toxicity Post, Reddit Thread on Toxicity Filter

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