Today our Player Protection teams will be sharing updates on some of the developments we're making on our Anti-Cheat and Anti-Toxicity systems.
IN THIS UPDATE
ANTI-CHEAT
- Status Overview
- MouseTrap - Mouse and Keyboard Detection on Console
- Rage Cheating & Gameplay Violations
- Lag Exploits
- Encryption - Binary Hardening
- Sanctions
- Final Thoughts
ANTI-TOXICITY
- Reputation System Refresh
- Automated Text Chat Moderation
- Privacy Mode - Unacceptable Usernames
- Our Direction
In Operation Collision Point, we've brought changes to improve the experience for both PC and console players, with continued binary hardening improvements for PC, the new MouseTrap penalty for consoles, and more. Today, our Anti-Cheat team will cover how we got here and what they've been working on, while sharing new data and analytics.
STATUS OVERVIEW
CHEAT VENDOR EXITS
We've touched on this before, but we'd like to share a little more on this here. Late last year, one of the most prevalent cheat vendors exited the Siege space. Leading up to this, the cheat vendor was either offline or being detected, meaning their cheats would be non-functional or result in a ban. This came from our multi-faceted approach to anti-cheat, combining measures in both detection and hardening. This has been a great success for Siege, and our mission is to continue making Siege less viable for cheat vendors.
CHEATER REPORTS DECREASING
PC CHEATER REPORTS
Cheater reports have been decreasing, and we've got all-new data to share on this. In the graph above, we can see that cheater reports have been consistently trending downward since the beginning of October, revealing that players are noticing the change in cheater presence. Cheater reports have now decreased by over 40% when compared to our highs of summer 2024, and year on year we've seen a drop upwards of 30%.
CONSOLE CHEATER REPORTS
Console cheater reports have remained largely stable throughout the year. Reports did see an increase at the start of December, though we believe the majority of these are due to the crossplay default setting bug that players had experienced at the launch of Y9S4. We remain focused on our console Anti-Cheat efforts, with more details on MouseTrap below.
FUTURE UPDATES - OUR MISSION IS UNCHANGED
The fight is not over. We know that other cheat makers will attempt to take advantage of the space left behind by a cheat vendor that has pulled out. The removal of this cheat creator changes very little for the Anti-Cheat team roadmap: we will keep investing and innovating in new hardening and detection technologies, to the betterment of Siege.
MOUSETRAP - MOUSE & KEYBOARD DETECTION ON CONSOLE
- Reminder: MouseTrap is our console Anti-Cheat which works to detect devices that enable the use of mouse and keyboard.
NEW PENALTY LIVE
Y9S4 saw the release of the new MouseTrap penalty system. If detected 3 times, spoofers are forced into the PC matchmaking pool with PC recoil enabled for 90 days. This is a stark change in severity compared to the previous system, which would reduce its effects as soon as the player stopped using a spoofing device. Such a change was made possible by updates to the AI model which reinforced accuracy and further diminished false positives.
Looking at the season launch we know that console players may not have felt the full impact of MouseTrap (as shown in the graph above with a rise in cheater reports at the start of December), with a bug enabling Console to PC crossplay by default, resulting in controller players being unknowingly matched with PC players who were legitimately using keyboard and mouse.
Overall, our data shows that the system is working as expected, detecting and applying penalties to spoofing device users, forcing them into the PC pool. We are confident in our detection, though we know that some players have been able to bypass detection this season. This bypass method is currently being investigated, and we'll be enabling a fix for this soon.
We are closely monitoring MouseTrap and will continue to do so as we ramp up its AI capabilities. Our team is looking into improvements and new ways to utilize AI, which will help us to bolster our detection of cheating on console.
RAGE CHEATING & GAMEPLAY VIOLATIONS
- Reminder: Gameplay Violations are actions that are technically possible within the game engine but are in effect forbidden and not possible from a gameplay perspective, such as shooting while sprinting.
Y9S3 has been our best season yet against rage cheating, thanks to a new system we implemented which detects Gameplay Violations. This new system has rendered the use of rage cheats a guaranteed ban, and at its peak, even outperformed our Data Ban system. With this foundational tech in place, it is now easier for the team to implement new Gameplay Violations as rage cheats arise.
LAG EXPLOIT SOLUTIONS
We noticed a rise in new lag-based exploits at the beginning of Y9S4. These exploits, which can happen on console, abuse client-server synchronization using network lag. Our team has recently pushed a fix to address these exploits, with an accompanying ban wave. We'd also like to thank players and creators for their help here, as reports submitted via R6Fix played a major role in our initial fixes. We'll continue to monitor this space closely.
ENCRYPTION - BINARY HARDENING
- Reminder: Binary hardening is the act of using encryption and hardening techniques to update the game code base and enhance security, and we've continued to deploy these updates to the game with each patch.
In Y9S4, we reinforced our hardening capacity even further, with more experts within the team working on improving game security. We've seen success from these efforts, with each patch this season resulting in a decrease in cheater reports and online mentions of cheats on patch day. As well as this, we can share that we're tracking another major cheat provider which has been offline since updates were deployed earlier this season. While we cannot delve into the details of each of our updates, we can confirm that they're delivering concrete results with increased offline time for cheat providers. We hope that you're feeling these results in-game too and as always, these efforts will continue.
SANCTIONS
CHEATER MATCH CANCELLATION
We had made the decision to hold Cheater Match Cancellation from the Y9S4 launch, so that additional time could be taken to ensure a smooth release. It's now live, having been activated in an update earlier this season. This has enabled cheaters to be kicked from a match as soon as a ban is issued, at which point the Cheater Match Cancellation feature will be triggered, cancelling the ongoing match for everyone. The result here is a reduction of player time being spent in unfair or illegitimate matches.
BOTTING SANCTIONS
- Reminder: Botting refers to the use of automated programs designed to perform in-game actions without the interaction of a player.
Our botting detection has been working well, though as we've heard from our community, the temporary bans which were being applied were not enough. With this in mind, we recently changed bans for botting to a permanent ban on the first offence. This change was made possible thanks to improvements in our detection system, leading to greater accuracy and system confidence.
BAN NUMBERS - BATTLEYE + R6 BANS
Our ban data for 2024, updated to include October, November, and December.
Below are some key points we'd like to share:
AUGUST, SEPTEMBER, & OCTOBER - R6 BANS [Data Bans, Gameplay Violation Bans, & more]
- R6 Bans performed very well during these months. This was due to our implementation of Gameplay Violations detections, resulting in an uplift in bans for this period.
OCTOBER & NOVEMBER - BATTLEYE BANS
- BattlEye bans saw an increase in October and a secondary sharper increase in November. This was a direct result of our increased collaboration with BattlEye, and their own efforts to find new ways of detecting cheats.
DECEMBER
- December marked our latest season release, and while we see a decline in overall bans here, we also see that players have reported fewer cheaters compared to previous months (see Cheater Reports Trends above).
As of today, many cheats in the current landscape are either offline, having issues, or being detected by BattlEye.
FINAL THOUGHTS
As you can see from what we've shared today, we've got a multi-pronged approach to Siege Anti-Cheat, and we've seen results over Y9S3 and Y9S4. We will keep pushing and bringing information to you as we move forward.
Y9S4 saw the release of some of our biggest initiatives in Anti-Toxicity with Automated Text Chat Moderation and the Reputation System Refresh. Let's dig into these with our Anti-Toxicity team and see how they've impacted the game and players so far.
REPUTATION SYSTEM REFRESH
INITIAL OVERVIEW
The Reputation System Refresh is here, and so far this season, its performance and impact has matched our core pillars (transparency, understandability, and clarity) and expectations. We're finding that players who are regularly or highly toxic are correctly being classified as Dishonorable or Disruptive, while positive players and those who are adapting their behavior are having that reflected with the higher Standings of Respectable, Esteemed, and Exemplary.
STANDINGS BREAKDOWN
Here we have a visual breakdown of the Standings distribution for Y9S4. Currently 1.21% of players are in the Dishonorable (lowest) bracket, with 2.58% being Disruptive (second lowest), and our points system is ensuring that it takes a number of consistent negative steps to get into these brackets. Avoiding negative behavior will help any player to attain the Respectable Standing, and being positive in our matches without negativity, will help you climb higher.
We've seen feedback that it feels too difficult to attain the Exemplary standing and that only a small number of negative actions are needed before dropping out of it. This is by design, so behaviour in this Standing must be close to perfect.
Of course, we will continue to monitor player feedback ensuring that the system works as expected. We are confidently moving towards activating the Reputation System Impacts soon (impacts based on your Reputation Standing) and moving out of Beta.
AUTOMATED TEXT CHAT MODERATION
LAUNCH
To start with, we're happy with the introduction of automated text chat moderation in Siege. We know that we got some of the detections wrong, though we've built this system with responsive adaptability in mind, so we have been able to fix issues reported to us within the same day. Below are some examples of messages that were flagged in the early stages of release, that have since been resolved.
- "very well shot, masterful aim and play"
- "ping4"
- "put a mira"
- "meastro down"
- "toxic"
- "emp"
- "I shot at lion through the hatch"
We know that in some cases players may come across examples of messages that should or shouldn't be flagged. We are constantly looking at player feedback to refine the system, and are using your reports to apply prompt fixes, improving the experience for everyone.
We've also resolved a bug where some normal messages could be removed if they were sent too quickly in a row, such as "GG" - this was fixed during the hotfix on December 18th.
IMPACT ON PLAYERS
Since the launch of our automated moderation, we've seen the probability of seeing a player reported for abusive text chat drop by 33% overall, and alongside this, the amount of highly toxic players in text chat has been reduced by 80%.
These figures show that the Automated Text Chat Moderation has had an instant effect on how some players choose to communicate in-game, leading to a more positive experience overall. We will maintain our live balancing ensuring that we can continue protecting players from recurrent or high toxicity.
PRIVACY MODE - UNACCEPTABLE USERNAMES
We are aware that some toxicity remains in-game through the use of offensive Privacy Mode usernames. We are currently working to improve our Anti-Toxicity username solution, and we can confirm that using such usernames may result in a ban. We're constantly banning players who choose to go over the limit with their chosen Privacy Mode usernames.
UPCOMING
We want to keep you up to date with some of the other features and improvements that will be coming in the future. Here's a rundown on some topics we're working on in the background:
- Automated Voice Chat Moderation
- Improving privacy settings for PC and Consoles
- Reworking in-game reports: Adding more granularity and improving the feedback loop
- Improving the abandonment penalty system
OUR DIRECTION
The Reputation System Refresh has seen a successful release that has clearly affected the negative communication in-game. The Automated Text Chat Moderation is also working well, and while we're aware that balancing will always be needed, we're ensuring that we can remain reactive to bring change quickly. Our goal now is to work on bringing the Impacts portion of the Reputation System live, so that players can be recognised for their positivity, or helped towards rehabilitation with impacts on their usual in-game rewards.