Ubisoft is sick of toxicity in its games, and to combat it, it’s whipping out the banhammer as a “first step” in getting the playerbase under control.
“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 company told Rainbow Six Siege players on Reddit over the weekend. “The bans for this will fall within the following durations, depending on severity” – that’s everything from two days to a permanent ban. “Any language or content deemed illegal, dangerous, threatening, abusive, obscene, vulgar, defamatory, hateful, racist, sexist, ethically offensive or constituting harassment is forbidden.”
Moreover, toxicity-related bans will be broadcast via global message for all to see.
As Kotaku points out, Rainbow Six Siege in particular has a long history of toxicity that’s become a perpetual subject of angst among the community, such that players have been begging for Ubisoft to do something about it so that chat is usable for non-toxic players again.
Meanwhile, over in Overwatch land, Blizzard is finding itself confronted by a brand-new ESPN article calling out the studio for doing nothing about an Overwatch League player’s nasty comments. “No response from Overwatch League to Taimou’s use of gay slurs on stream” blares the headline. During an incident that took place in January, Dallas Fuel pro player Taimou was caught openly using homophobic, racist, and ageist language toward other players. Apparently it’s not even the first time the Fuel’s dealt with its players being awful, and it’s unclear right now what the team and Blizzard are planning to do about it (a report back in January was allegedly already dismissed by Blizz support). As our readers are surely well aware, Blizzard has been very vocal about thwarting Overwatch toxicity, but skepticism among players and watchers remains high.
When ESPN is calling you out…
