Rainbow Six Siege Permabans For First Offence Cheaters

Obviously you would never cheat, dear reader - this is a post about the dreadful OTHER people who do. Everyone from my terrible sister who I have to pat down EVERY TIME we play bee kerplunk to find out how many bees she has hidden in her pockets to those people who use x-ray vision tech to see through walls in shooters.

Ubisoft have announced that they WILL NOT STAND FOR IT: "Today we are introducing a permanent ban on first offense for cheating or hacking in Rainbow Six Siege."

I'm not sure what their policy on bee kerplunk is. Perhaps a jail term?

The official blog post notes: "The presence of cheating in the game is something we take very seriously, and is a priority on the development team. This update is one step among many that we are working on to better engage with the community on this issue."

I like the ambiguity of that first sentence. Like, without the rest of the context the Rainbow Six Siege [official site] dev team might just be prioritising cheating rather than prioritising stamping it out.

Something I found interesting in the post, though, is that the destructability of walls and so on has added an extra level of unreliability to community reporting of cheats:

"Being an online competitive game and considering Rainbow Six Siege's unique features of destructibility and intel gathering, certain challenges come with community reporting. For example, a player getting a head shot through a wall is quite commonplace. This has potential to create a perception that someone is cheating.

"While this is sometimes the case, we are working hard to differentiate reports of players who are coordinating with their team for information (how the game is meant to be played), and from someone who is maliciously altering the experience with third party software.

"If you do encounter a cheater in the game, you can report them via the in-game report button, or submit their information to Ubisoft Support."

I don't play Siege so I'd totally forgotten that aspect of the game and, yeah, I can see how that might be a weird one to try to counteract. Videogames don't really have the option to pat the other player down for plastic bees when they start giggling in a suspicious manner, and some people react really badly to being outplayed and will shout "CHEAT" with very little provocation. I mean, I'm so bad at some shooters that I have a tendency to skip past calling people "cheats" and go straight to accusations of witchcraft and technomancy.

Here's the accompanying FAQ with a bit more info. I'm not sure what form of cheating you'd need to be guilty of to only get the temporary ban but the general tone is that Ubisoft are going to lean more towards using the permaban hammer as a deterrent.

In what situations are you going to ban on the first offense?
- If you get caught cheating, you will be banned on the first offense.
Why are you permanently banning players on first offense?
- We are introducing this because if a player is cheating, we do not want them returning to ruin the experience of other players.
What happens if I get permanently banned and I wasn't cheating?
- You can request an appeal by contacting Ubisoft Support; Support will notify you of the result of the appeal after it has been reviewed.
Are you going to permanently ban every cheater you detect?
- There are some cases where we will not permanently ban a player on their first offense, and they will receive a temporary ban.
What is a Temporary Ban?
- A temporary ban restricts access to the online features of the game for a period of up to 15 days. If a player has received a temporary ban and they are detected as cheating a second time, they will receive a permanent ban.
What determines whether or not a player is cheating?
- There are several ways we identify cheaters, with FairFight being the primary one.
What is FairFight?
- Fairfight is a non-invasive, customizable, server sided anti-cheat engine using agnostic technology that operates in real time.
How do I report a suspected cheater in-game?
- Please use the report button in game, or contact Ubisoft Support if you have any video evidence. It will help us to gather all the needed information for further investigation.