Rainbow Six Siege Year 11 Player Protection Update

Ubisoft has announced the Rainbow Six Siege Year 11 Player Protection Update, coming soon. The update will focus on all forms of security, from anti-cheat to anti-toxicity, alongside an overall improvement to the R6 Shieldguard.

Given the recent issues over Christmas, Rainbow Six Siege has a lot of work to do to improve the trust with its community.  Sadly for Ubisoft, a lot of these attacks did seem to come as a result of Ubisoft talking up how good the new anti-cheat was.

Year 11 Player Protection Update

Starting off, Ubisoft confirmed that the recent cyberattack did indeed compromise players’ inventories, but that these have now been restored. The situation is still being investigated, though Ubisoft confirmed that (at least so far) no player information looks to have been compromised.

As a result, Year 11 will continue to improve this area of security, including the requirement of an app-based two-factor authentication being used for Ranked Play and Marketplace.

Ubisoft also said that the Marketplace will remain closed for now while they work on improvements. This is expected to take several months still.

R6 Shield

R6 Shield is Rainbow Six’s anti-cheat, and with cheating being a major concern for players at the highest ranks, it’s a continued project in Year 11. Ubisoft stated that the number of cheaters was down, though R6 ShieldGuard has still been seeing improvements. Obviously, given the recent cyberattacks, player confidence is likely very low.

Secure Boot

Ubisoft also talked about the R6 ShieldGuard Secure Platform, which is the latest game to include a Secure Boot kernel-level anti-cheat. For players on PC, these are becoming the norm, with developers such as Riot Games and DICE also using them to stop cheaters in their games.

These anti-cheats at the kernel level do the job, but they come with issues. BF6 is probably the first example of one of these systems backfiring, when players not on Windows 11 found out the feature was not on by default. Turning it on required people to go into their BIOS, which then says that some people brick their PCs. This was a smaller number of people, but it is a sideeffect of such anti-cheats. It’s also worth noting that for a period, the BF6 Secure Boot refused to load with the Riot Games Vanguard Secure Boot open. This is a possible long-term side effect of Kernal level anti-cheats detecting other anti-cheats as cheats…

For now, Ubisoft will only roll this feature out to the “top of the Ladder” which is the codename for the new competitive playlist. We may never see the feature roll out to the wider game, and it’s fair to say that if it causes similar issues to the ones Battlefield 6 added, it likely won’t.

Other Changes in Year 11

Here are the highlights of the rest of the changes:

• Official mouse and keyboard support for console – this will also see Ubisoft lock down input spoofing more aggressively
• Mousetrap Bans and Recoil Macro Detection – Ubisoft will work harder on banning people using spoofing methods to bypass inputs
• Boosting and Smurfing – Ubisoft is looking to crack down on people both smurfing and boosting in Year 11
• Anti-Toxicity – Live moderation and the Reputation System have reduced “critical toxic communications” by 50% and overall toxicity exposure by 25%, according to Ubisoft.

Ubisoft ended the stream with a brief closing thought ahead of Year 11.

“Player Protection remains a top priority for Rainbow Six Siege, and together with your feedback, we are continually evolving our systems to keep the game fair, secure, and enjoyable. Our goal is to create an environment where skill and strategy define success, preserving the competitive integrity that is at the heart of Siege.”