Cheating is a big problem in most online shooters, but it's a particular problem for any shooter that's also an esport. Rainbow Six Siege has long been a staple of the esports community, with official tournaments regularly inviting ranked players for their chance to win prize pools worth millions of dollars.
With that sort of incentive, it's easy to see why some players might resort to cheating, which ruins the game for everyone else. That's why one player is asking Ubisoft to "#SaveSiege" by making the health of Siege its number one priority.
"Retweet this tweet if you think Rainbow Six Siege has a massive cheating problem and it should be Ubisoft’s #1 priority going forward #SaveSiege," wrote @TSM_Achieved, team captain and shot caller for TSM FTX. It's an opinion shared by many players as his tweet received over 2,500 retweets and over 4,600 likes after it was posted Sunday.
Rainbow Six Siege currently uses BattlEye as its anti-cheat detection system, which is the same one used in DayZ, Ark, Arma, Escape From Tarkov, and most recently Destiny 2. However, it seems like BattlEye isn’t enough to completely eradicate cheaters from Siege, as one player notes aimbots, infinite ammo hacks, and DDOS attacks remain an issue.
It's hard to accuse Ubisoft of being too lazy, however. The French publisher recently sued a known cheating ring in order to shut down its operations. If Ubisoft is willing to pay layers’ fees to keep Siege safe, it’s willing to do whatever it takes.
The #SaveSiege hashtag also comes alongside a weekend of technical woes for Rainbow Six Siege. Two issues, one affecting Xbox players and the other affecting PC matchmaking, kept most folks away from the game entirely until they were resolved last night. Xbox players saw their infrastructure issued resolved relatively quickly, but PC players were unable to play for most of the weekend as mysterious new player "ghost" accounts prevented anyone from playing in anything other than quick match.
Those issues seemed to have gotten resolved last night, but now console players are suffering from a similar issue when joining squads.