Rainbow Six Siege players who use slurs are now getting instantly banned

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A healthy step towards a less toxic community.

Note: This story contains a video and image that uses homophobic and racist slurs.

Dropping hate speech in Rainbow Six Siege now comes with automatic consequences. Since yesterday, dozens of players have been saying that they received an automatic instant ban after using a racist or homophobic slur in text chat. Ubisoft has confirmed to PC Gamer via email that a new banning system is live in Siege.  

These bans seem to last for 27 minutes on first instance, and prevent playing any aspect of Siege, including Terrorist Hunt or custom games. Upon second and third offense, the ban increases to 2 hours. After the third offense, an official investigation into the account is conducted that could lead to a permanent ban, per the Siege Code of Conduct. 

Asked about the ban on Twitter, Ubisoft referred to a post in its dev blog from April that addressed toxicity. Back then, Ubi promised several features coming this year, like muting text chat and enhanced chat monitoring for abusive language. A chat filter was also promised with an estimated arrival for Season 3, but the feature set is a bit different than what is in place today.

“Our team is working on the creation of an automated system that will censor text chat in game based on a chat filter list. This will replace words that have been identified as offensive and provide players with a notification that their language was found to be unacceptable. We will also be tracking 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,” Ubi wrote in the April post.

As seen in the video below by Redditor EMU4, the current system doesn’t appear to censor the slur used or hide it to players, but immediately after typing it the player receives a ban and is removed from the match.

Some have praised Ubi’s efforts to curb hate speech, while others expressed anger that their favorite words are now off-limits. “Just wanted to say I’ve watched a few people get banned right in front of my eyes! It’s beautiful!” Reddit user TheDeaves said in a post on the front page of the Siege subreddit. 

Morgan Park
Morgan Park
Staff Writer

Morgan has been writing for PC Gamer since 2018, first as a freelancer and currently as a staff writer. He has also appeared on Polygon, Kotaku, Fanbyte, and PCGamesN. Before freelancing, he spent most of high school and all of college writing at small gaming sites that didn't pay him. He's very happy to have a real job now. Morgan is a beat writer following the latest and greatest shooters and the communities that play them. He also writes general news, reviews, features, the occasional guide, and bad jokes in Slack. Twist his arm, and he'll even write about a boring strategy game. Please don't, though.