In March, Ubisoft announced plans to combat "chat toxicity" in Rainbow Six Siege by implementing a system of bans for players who use hate speech, including racist and homophobic slurs, in the game. Today it elaborated on its goals in a blog post, saying that it aims to "track negative player behavior, manage those that behave poorly, and eventually implement features that will encourage players to improve their behavior."
Chat monitoring has already been underway since mid-March, but Ubisoft also wants to give players the ability to more directly moderate their interactions by allowing anyone to mute individual players' text chat in addition to voice, which has been silenceable for some time. An automated chat filtering system that will censor text chat based on a list of offensive words is on the way as well; it will also track the number of times players trigger the filter, and Ubisoft "will take action as necessary for players that are intentionally having a negative impact on other players' gaming experiences."
It's not just chat dickishness that's on Ubisoft's radar: It's also working on improving its systems for dealing with intentional team-killers, a longstanding issue in Siege. Ubi doesn't want to tip its hand about what it has in mind for teamkillers, but we've seen developers like Valve use methods like pairing players with recorded bad behavior with each other in matchmaking in an effort to clump bad eggs into their own baskets.
The team-killer changes are expected to go live this year in season two, while the chat mute and filtering options have an ETA of season three. Exact start dates for those haven't been set yet, but historically they've been quarterly. Season one began with the launch of Operation Chimera last month.
"These short-term changes will begin to address toxicity, but we do not plan to stop there," Ubisoft wrote. "We are serious about tackling the issues surrounding the potential for a negative player experience, and we will share any further changes with you prior to their implementation."
