Ubisoft has released a blog, detailing their efforts in fighting cheating in matchmaking.
"Our team, focusing on all things Anti-Cheat and Player Behavior, are committed to continuing this fight against cheaters and supporting this giant industry we all love. Rest assured, we're hard at work in the shadows, trying to make things better for you," the end of the blog read.
Ubisoft shared important statistics concerning exactly how many cheaters they've banned: 220,880 since Jan. 2020. That figure combines BattlEye bans and bans based on data that they've gathered.
Additionally, they shared how they're working to combat cheating, using factors like encrypting more layers of data every time an update is shipped and the game is most vulnerable.
Ubisoft also mentioned they've kicked off a "close collaboration" with another company as part of an investment in "Threat Intelligence".
Finally, Ubisoft shared all the other departments that have some level of commitment to combat cheaters. Legal is there: Ubisoft has been a part of some very public lawsuits against cheat makers and DDoS attack services in the past. Account Technology is there as well: cheaters pulling players' accounts has been a problem in the past.
Ubisoft's data-based bans have become controversial due to several behind the scenes "false positives" - alternate accounts of high level players have been data banned because they were playing against lower-level players and had absurdly high statistics for the newness of their account.
So far, the only false positives that have been triggered stemmed from smurf accounts of players playing against less experienced players. Smurfs or not, we want players to be able to trust these detections, so we're continuing to further improve their accuracy," the blog read.
Plans to start automatically banning "new behaviors" will roll out next season, according to the blog.
Cheating in matchmaking is not an issue containted to Rainbow Six Siege. To some extent, every multiplayer game is effected by it: even Riot's vaunted Vanguard anti-cheat isn't 100 percent effective.
While that's true, Ubisoft acknowledges they've been mostly quiet about this issue that thousands of players care deeply about. They've commited to release an anti-cheat update every one and a half months, or twice a season.