Posted in: Games, Video Games | Tagged: Rainbow Six, rainbow six: siege, tom clancy, Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six: Siege, ubisoft

Ubisoft Launches New Rainbow Six Ban System to Combat Racial and Homophobic Slurs

Published Sat, 03 Mar 2018 17:45:40 -0600

by Madeline Ricchiuto

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Its no secret that the online communities of most FPS games have a tendency to say things in matches that they probably wouldn't otherwise. Casual racism and homophobia have been plaguing multiplayer video games since the advent of online matches (though they've been a part of gamer culture for quite a deal longer). However, Ubisoft is adding a new ban system to combat the racial and homophobic slurs in Rainbow Six Siege, which is a pretty surprising move considering Ubisoft has a tendency to come off as a good old boys club.

Ubisoft announced the new system on the Official Rainbow Six Siege subreddit. Their statement reads, in full:

Starting next week, 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. The bans for this will fall within the following durations, depending on severity:

2 Days

7 Days

15 Days

Permanent

We will be tracking the frequency at which language that violates the Code of Conduct is used by individual players, and will apply the appropriate ban on a case-by-case basis.

The type of language we will be taking action against is outlined in the following section of the Code of Conduct:

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

Players that receive a ban for toxicity will receive a pop-up that states their ban was the result of toxic behavior. A global message will also be displayed, similar to the current global broadcasts for cheating. It will read: "Username 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.

While this new ban system is far from perfect, it is a pretty decent first step to combating the often toxic nature of online gamer culture.

And before you argue that this is a violation of your rights to free speech or that this is overzealous, the code of conduct for Rainbow Six Siege has to be agreed to before you can play. Meaning, by playing the game you agree to the terms set out by Ubisoft for use of their game, which includes refraining from hatespeech. And before you try and bring up "free speech" remember Ubisoft is a buisness, and can absolutely censor speech with no infringement upon your human rights.

So they are absolutely able to ban you for hatespeech and there isn't much you can do about it.

And if you can't enjoy a good match without resorting to racial or homophobic slurs, you need to re-evaluate your life choices my friend.

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