ANTI-CHEAT STATUS UPDATE – MAY 2024
Our latest Anti-Cheat Status Update for May 2024 is here, bringing the latest updates on MouseTrap, the QB System and more!
TEAM UPDATE
Our Anti-Cheat team is evolving. We're currently restructuring, growing, and allocating more resources to our Anti-Cheat team, ensuring that we can provide a secure future for Siege. As the team expands, we'll have more opportunities to reflect the benefits of this growing team in-game. While we're in this stage, our team remains focused on improving your experience.
BANS: DATA BANS + BATTLEYE
BAN NUMBERS
Here we have our latest ban data, including bans for February, March, and April.
DATA BANS & ADDITIONAL DETECTIONS
This season marks a significant evolution in our approach to cheating, as we've made improvements to our Data Ban system moving to a machine learning model. We've vastly increased the number of data points used to analyze a player's performance, resulting in a meaningful increase in cheaters being detected and sanctioned through this method. We've also optimized our sanctioning process by increasing how often we run our sanctions, effectively reducing the time it takes to ban detected cheaters by half using this model.
In addition to these efforts, we also have new Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) detections which are currently being used to sanction players. We know that this has been affecting players and we want to make it clear that we are working on identifying behaviors and sanctioning players who are taking advantage of these services.
Looking ahead, we're working on an improved detection of AFK avoiders (idle botters) as well as additional cheat detection updates. These will further enhance our ability to identify and ban cheaters in Rainbow Six Siege, improving the experience for everyone.
ADDRESSED CHEATS & HARDENING
ONGOING INVESTIGATIONS
CHEATING INCREASE
As we recently communicated, we are aware of the increase in cheating behaviors reported by the community. We want to reassure you that addressing these concerns is a top priority for our Anti-Cheat team and that we are looking to deploy solutions to resolve these issues as soon as possible. The Y9S1.3 patch deployed on May 2nd has temporarily improved this situation while we work on longer term solutions to prevent those cheats.
CRASH EXPLOIT
Our team is actively working on a fix for the Crash Exploit reported by the community. Until then, Abandon Penalties have been retroactively reduced to a 5-minute duration. All newly issued Abandon Penalties will be 5 minutes as well. Thanks a lot for your reports!
ADDRESSED CHEATS
Several cheats have been addressed since our last Anti-Cheat Status Update, with some updates going live with Y9S1.3. However, in recent months, we have seen a dramatic decrease in a number of rage cheats being used. This reflects the ongoing work that our team is doing in order to tackle new cheats and protect the game and its players.
HARDENING
Hardening is the act of increasing the security and reducing the surface of vulnerability of the game's code, to protect against attackers. In Y9S1.2, we made several changes which resulted in improved overall game security, and we'll have more improvements coming in Y9S2. These improvements are continuous, and our updates are playing a crucial role in making the game safer. We'll be sharing more on our hardening efforts in the future.
QB SYSTEM
QB is a security system available on PC, designed to make cheat creation more tedious, difficult, and expensive. By creating a less effective environment for cheat creators, our aim is to reduce the amount of cheats being successfully created and sold.
UPDATE CADENCE & UX IMPROVEMENTS
We want to ensure that QB remains effective, so as promised, we are continuing to provide regular updates to this system, and these will come at an increased cadence compared to Year 8.
Another goal of ours is to share more information with legitimate players, helping to understand why a game restart may be happening. Some of these changes are already live; for instance, you may now see the "Update available" prompt in-game in some circumstances, asking you to restart the game when possible.
MOUSETRAP
CURRENT STATUS
MouseTrap is a system designed to detect spoofing devices which enable the use of mouse and keyboard on consoles. Changes implemented in Y9S1 have broadened its detection capabilities, allowing us to find more suspicious players.
This season, we are also focusing on your feedback, with most changes being aimed towards enhancing our current system. The Y9S1.3 update is helping to further increase the accuracy of MouseTrap by expanding on the types of devices that it can recognize, and improving the detection of currently identifiable devices. As well as this, the update is working to further minimize false positives, resulting in fewer controller players being incorrectly detected.
MOUSETRAP PENALTIES & MATCHMAKING [TARGET: Y9S4]
In Y9S4, we'll be making use of MouseTrap's detection in new ways, directly improving the experience for controller players. In this upcoming Y9S4 update, if a player is detected using a spoofing device three times,the updated Crossplay system will automatically place them into the PC matchmaking pool for a 90-day period. This will result in matches that feel fairer for controller players, while giving users of the spoofing devices a choice in how they want to play the game.
CONCLUSION
In conclusion, our dedication to upholding the integrity and fairness of Rainbow Six Siege is unwavering. Our goal this year is to make Rainbow Six Siege both more secure and more reactive when it comes to cheating. Through a multifaceted approach, encompassing machine learning and Data Bans, rigorous hardening, and innovative detection systems such as QB and Mousetrap, we are continuously following up on our commitment to safeguarding the gaming experience for all players.
Cheaters have no place in Siege, our teams are committed to making Siege safe and enjoyable for everyone.