A prominent Rainbow Six Siege content creator has been dismissed from the game's official creator program, with Ubisoft going so far as to permanently remove his unique weapon charm from the game. Being a highly competitive PvP multiplayer game, Siege has had its fair share of racism, bullying, cheating, and otherwise toxic behavior from select community members over the years, but Ubisoft seems to be having none of that.Naturally, it's worth keeping in mind that no popular multiplayer title is wholly free of such toxicity. A prominent example from a while back is that of an Overwatch player who experienced anti-Asian harassment at the peak of the Covid crisis, though it's hardly the only such instance that's cropped up over the years. There are many examples of racism casually popping up over the voice chat in particular.It didn't take long for Ubisoft to catch wind of some of the jokes that Rainbow Six Siege streamer Thaqil had recently made. Specifically, it would seem that the Siege Operator Castle has been Thaqil's target for the most part, with the streamer getting into a number of situations with serious racist implications just for the heck of it. Examples include Thaqil posing with a banana next to an image of Castle, assorted references to racist verbiage when referring to Castle, and more. Ubisoft promptly dropped the streamer from its content creator program and removed the custom weapon charm that had been released to commemorate Thaqil's contribution to the community.
Though Thaqil issued a substantially long justification for his racist behavior, it doesn't seem likely that Ubisoft will walk back its decision to cut the streamer off. Whereas Thaqil claims that his racism was just a matter of edgy, tasteless joking, the fact remains that they broke Ubisoft's official Siege Code of Conduct. It's a situation that makes even some of the various Rainbow Six Siege hackers appear less problematic, in comparison.
Racism is, thankfully, widely frowned upon by most game developers. One of the most widespread examples of a zero-tolerance policy towards in-game racism came about back in 2020, when the developers of Smite banned 5,000 accounts on the basis of racist behavior. Ubisoft's reaction seems somewhat tame in comparison, but considering the fact that Thaqil was a relatively prominent member of the community with an official platform, it was perhaps one of the only ways to contain the situation.
Though Siege has certainly helped keep the Rainbow Six franchise in the limelight, there's no way for it to get around the usual assortment of issues that crop up in virtually all competitive multiplayer games. Fans of the IP that would like to forego all of this toxicity and enjoy some classic R6 gameplay don't have anywhere to turn to, however, which causes some people to feel that Ubisoft has forgotten the roots of Rainbow Six​​​​​​ in recent years.
Rainbow Six Siege is currently available on PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S.
Source: NME
