UbisoftAt the very best of times, online gaming is an incredible escape where you meet new friends, hang out with old friends, and genuinely have a blast with a game you love. At the worst of times, online gaming is a cesspit of verbal abuse, racial slurs, and major toxicity.
Since it’s become depressingly clear that the negative aspects of online gaming aren’t going anywhere on their own, publishers and developers are attempting to step up to do more to combat the toxic elements that ruin games for the rest of us.
One of these publishers is Ubisoft, who has a team hard at work trying to combat the bad apples of its popular tactical shooter Rainbow Six Siege, a game that’s gained something of a reputation for harbouring some pretty nasty chat.
As reported by PC Gamer, Ubisoft has introduced a range of new options that have been designed to report and deal with players more efficiently. You can now report players for multiple reasons: hacking, abusive text chat, voice abuse, and… um, negative attitude.
While I think we can all agree that hacking, abusive text chat, and voice abuse are all fairly self explanatory, “negative attitude” is a fairly abstract concept by comparison. It doesn’t help that Ubisoft hasn’t provided an in-game definition of the term, which surely means that being reported for negative attitude is destined for abuse.
Are you going to find yourself on the wrong end of the report button for not laughing at a teammate’s joke? For quietly swearing to yourself if you mess up? For generally being a negative nelly and accepting defeat halfway through a match? Who knows where the line is.
UbisoftIt’s doubtful that we’re going to be the only ones confused by the meaning of negative attitude, so I’ll keep an eye out for Ubisoft’s inevitable clarification on what does and doesn’t constitute negative attitude in Rainbow Six Siege, and will be sure to update you when I hear back.
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Ewan Moore is a journalist at UNILAD Gaming who still quite hasn’t gotten out of his mid 00’s emo phase. After graduating from the University of Portsmouth in 2015 with a BA in Journalism & Media Studies (thanks for asking), he went on to do some freelance words for various places, including Kotaku, Den of Geek, and TheSixthAxis, before landing a full time gig at UNILAD in 2016.