Rainbow Six Siege could lose cross-chat to curb toxicity

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Ubisoft has been making efforts to curb toxicity in Rainbow Six Siege over the past few years, and after reworks for the report system and strict suspensions over racist and homophobic language, the studio is taking an even more direct approach to stop bad behaviour: they’re removing cross-chat from the game.

At least, the developers are testing the removal of All chat. The latest test server update removes text chat between enemy teams across all standard game modes, though you’ll still be able to use cross-chat in custom games.

“As part of our continuous efforts against in-game toxicity,” Ubisoft says in the patch notes on Reddit, “we will be removing the cross-chat feature in live games. Our data consistently shows that a very high percentage of abusive chat reports are from cross-chat. Our aim is to make games a more welcoming experience and return the focus of the in-game chat to strategic team-based communications.”

Early response to the decision has broadly been negative. You can already mute individuals in text chat, and players note that a simple toggle for cross-chat might be a more equitable solution.

There’s no guarantee that these changes will hit the live server, though TTS updates tend to be a strong indicator of what’s coming next. As one of the biggest multiplayer games around, Siege could set the blueprint as other developers try to make their communities friendlier places.