Ubisoft has started automatically banning gamers who use homophobic or racist slurs in online games
The gaming giant introduced the new restrictions and has been faced with criticism
By Steve Brown
Ubisoft has starting automatically banning users who use homophobic or racist slurs in online games.
The games giant launched a new system for the shooter game ‘Rainbow Six Siege’ after they were met with repeated criticism about the use of homophobic and racist slurs within the gaming community.
Now, anyone who uses a restricted word under a new filtering system will be given an instant ban which lasts for half an hour, which extends to a two-hour ban if the words are continually used.
If they are constantly repeated, the system will permanently ban the user.
When an offence is committed, a notification appears saying: “Removed from match. You have been temporarily suspended due to Toxic Behaviour.”
Back in April, the gaming giant directed users to a blog post announcing the changes and wrote: “Toxicity management is a priority we will be focusing on as a team over the next few years, and we have a few different ways we plan on dealing with it.
“Our end goal is to track negative player behaviour, manage those that behave poorly, and eventually implement features that will encourage players to improve their behaviour.
“We have been working on some short-term changes that will quickly have an impact such as chat improvements.
“We are currently tracking the frequency at which racial or homophobic slurs are used by individual players, and will be applying bans with increasing severity on a case-by-case basis.
“This is clearly outlined in the following section of the Code of Conduct: Any language or content deemed illegal, dangerous, threatening, abusive, obscene, vulgar, defamatory, hateful, racist, sexist, ethically offensive or constituting harassment is forbidden.”
However, the new banning feature has angered many users but the company slapped back at players upset with the new feature.
They wrote: “We don’t want slurs or hate speech being used in our game. The only players who will be punished are those who continue to use the slurs and banned words in chat.”
Rainbow Six Siege also got involved in the discussion and defended Ubisoft’s decision.
They said: “If you know it can be taken out of context, you can always choose to not respond. No system is perfect, but it is working as intended in a majority of the cases we’ve been seeing.
“This is not our final update for dealing with toxicity — we will continue to observe and make changes and expansions as needed.”