Rainbow Six Siege Has Seen A 78% Drop In Mouse-And-Keyboard Users On Consoles

Rainbow Six Siege is continuing to take steps to combat cheaters and toxicity, and according to Ubisoft, many of the steps the developer has taken thus far are already working wonders.

In a blog post titled "Player Protection Updates - Year 8 and Beyond," Ubisoft has detailed its continued efforts to reduce cheating and toxic behavior, something it calls as one of the top complaints for the shooter genre as a whole. Two of those efforts, the MouseTrap detection system and QB anti-cheat features, appear to be getting the job done.

MouseTrap is Ubisoft's way of cracking down on console players who want to gain an unfair advantage by using a mouse-and-keyboard. The detection system launched on April 11, 2023, and Ubisoft has revealed that since the system's introduction, there has been a 78% reduction in the number of mouse-and-keyboard users playing Rainbow Six Siege on console. The ranked playlist alone saw a reduction of 73%.

That's well above what Ubisoft says were its initial expectations, which it guessed would be around 30-50%. Ubisoft notes that it didn't want to ban mouse-and-keyboard users outright, but give them a chance to switch back to playing with a controller or transition over to playing on PC. Ubisoft says that approach has paid off, and that 43% of penalized users continue to play the game without further penalties.

"If you've been hesitant to play ranked on console before or if you're thinking about returning to the game after some time away, now is the perfect time to give it a try as this means there are fewer mouse-and-keyboard players on console now than at any time in the past few years," Ubisoft says.

As for QB, Rainbow Six Siege's anti-cheat system for PC introduced in November 2022, Ubisoft says it's only getting started. The system has already led to the ban of over 10,000 cheaters, and several cheat vendors have stopped creating cheats for the game, according to Ubisoft.

Rainbow Six Siege's in-game reputation system, meant to reduce toxicity, seems to be having an impact as well. Ubisoft notes that half of the players who receive a warning for voice chat or text chat abuse have been "dissuaded" from continuing their bad behavior.

Even if recent efforts seem to be paying off, Ubisoft makes clear there is still more work to do. It will be introducing a new player commendation system this fall to give players a way to recognize each other for positive experiences, and the reputation system will receive an update to help players better understand the system. Privacy mode, a feature currently live in the PC version of Rainbow Six Siege designed to protect streamers and other players looking for more privacy options, will also be coming to consoles. Ubisoft is additionally looking to address "smurfing" in ranked matches (aka higher-rank players making new accounts to play against lower-level players) with new anti-smurfing measures that will be introduced in the future.

"This isn't the end of the journey, but the start," Ubisoft says. "Player protection is a never-ending battle and arms race, but our belief on the Siege development team is that this is one of the most important places to innovate--both as a game, and as an industry."