A prominent Rainbow Six: Siege content creator has been removed from the game’s official creator program, and Ubisoft has even permanently removed his unique weapon charm from the game. As a competitive PvP multiplayer game, Siege has suffered from racism, bullying, cheating, and other harmful behavior by some members of the community for years, but Ubisoft doesn’t seem to have that.
Of course, it’s worth remembering that no popular multiplayer game is completely free from this toxicity. A prominent example some time ago was an Overwatch player who suffered anti-Asian harassment at the height of the Covid crisis, though it wasn’t the only such instance to come up over the years. Especially in voice chat, there are many examples of racism.
It didn’t take long for Ubisoft to hear some recent jokes from Rainbow Six: Siege streamer Thaqil. Specifically, Siege Commander Citadel appears to have been largely targeted by Thaqil, and the streamer has gotten himself into a number of heavily racist situations just for the sake of it. Examples include Thaqil posing with a banana next to an image of Castle, various racist phrasing when referring to Castle, and more. Ubisoft quickly removed the streamer from its content creator program, as well as the custom weapon charm released to commemorate Thaqil’s contributions to the community.
Despite Thaqil’s lengthy defense of his racist actions, it seems unlikely that Ubisoft will reverse its decision to cut off streaming. While Thaqil claimed his racism was just a brash, tasteless joke, the fact remains that they violated Ubisoft’s official Siege code of conduct. This situation even makes some of the Rainbow Six Siege hacks seem less problematic by comparison.
Thankfully, most game developers are against racism. One of the most pervasive examples of a zero-tolerance policy for in-game racism occurred in 2020, when the developer of SMITE banned 5,000 accounts for racist behavior. Ubisoft’s response seems mild by comparison, but considering Thaqil is a relatively prominent member of the community with an official platform, it may be one of the only ways to contain the situation.
While Siege certainly helped keep the Rainbow Six franchise in the spotlight, it couldn’t fix the usual problems that crop up in nearly every competitive multiplayer game. IP fans looking to ditch all that toxicity and enjoy some classic R6 titles have nowhere to turn, leading some to feel that Ubisoft has forgotten about its Rainbow Six roots in recent years.
Rainbow Six: Siege is currently available on PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S.