What is botting in Rainbow Six Siege?

You’re mid-match in Rainbow Six Siege, maybe clutching a round, when a notification pops up in the bottom right corner. It announces a player ban, and the term “botting” catches your eye. You wonder what botting might mean in Siege since those bans can be permanent.

Before moving on to Rainbow Six Siege, I played quite a bit of MMORPGs which had their fair share of botting problems. In these games, bots were generally used to automate tasks that players didn’t want to do themselves, and there aren’t many of those in Siege, so what are bots used for?

What does botting mean in Rainbow Six Siege?

Botting in R6 refers to using unauthorized programs or scripts to automate gameplay functions like moving and crouching. The main goal of botting is to avoid getting kicked out of games and farm Renown in the process.

These bots typically queue for matches, and then perform minimal actions like spinning in circles or moving slightly to avoid being kicked for inactivity. This allows them to gain renown passively without actively playing the game. This disrupts the experience for legitimate players since botters cause matches to be extremely unbalanced and unfun.

What to do if you were banned for botting in R6

If you were banned for botting in R6, your first action should be contacting Ubisoft. You can appeal your ban via a support ticket and try to convince Ubisoft that you weren’t botting with evidence.

While botting itself is a clear violation, there can be situations where you might receive a false positive ban. This could happen if you’ve accumulated many reports for ruining games. Griefing involves intentionally ruining the game for your teammates, often by performing minimal actions to avoid getting kicked. These actions can be mistakenly flagged by the system as botting behavior.