Ubisoft to take action against Siege players “abusing AFK methods”

Ubisoft is taking action against players abusing AFK farming methods in Rainbow Six Siege and will evaluate “design changes” and “new automatic AFK detections and sanctions” to fix this issue, according to a tweet from yesterday. Punishment can include suspensions and bans.

Ubisoft announced it will not “tolerate bad actors disrupting and degrading the play experience of our player.” The first step in its plan on fixing the AFK issue was “a wave of manual sanctions” to accounts abusing these methods, beginning at the time of the announcement. It’s unclear how drastic those sanctions will be.

Ubisoft will also be evaluating design changes to help with the issue in the coming weeks, according to the tweet, alongside “automatic AFK detections and sanctions.” “Sanctions” is the term Ubisoft uses to describe punishments including temporary and possibly permanent bans.

AFK farming is a “rising issue” in Siege, according to the announcement. Players will use bots or other methods to move their characters every few seconds to avoid getting kicked for inactivity. This allows these AFK players to complete matches without participating, awarding Renown, XP, and other goodies.

Players can exploit AFK farming to water down the grind that takes to get their account to level 50, the minimum necessary to play in competitive. This means that players who want a smurf could employ the method to gain access to ranked modes, putting their teams at a strong disadvantage in the process. AFK farming can also take place to get more Renown at the end of a match, a resource used to unlock Operators and cosmetics.

Ubisoft’s latest moves show a push against that behavior, one that can gain even more strength depending on what additional measures come out of the company’s evaluations. Ubisoft also asked the community to report any players AFK farming in-game, likely as a step to strengthen their first wave of manual sanctions.