At this point, there is no online game without cheaters, although some games have fantastic anti-cheat solutions that weed out most of them. Rainbow Six Siege X, the recent free-to-play overhaul of Ubisoft’s tactical PvP game, is no different with cheaters now on the rise following the game’s recent re-launch.
Unfortunately, Rainbow Six Siege X is struggling with more cheaters than ever before, and creative director Alexander Karpazis explains that the team is working to kick wrongdoers from the game, but it has proven difficult.
Speaking to PC Gamer at the Gamescom Asia x Thailand Games Show, Karpazis admitted that the move to free-to-play has exacerbated the cheating issue, but planned updates to the game’s ShieldGuard anti-cheat should clear things up in the future.
“We knew having free access that it could be a vector that is exploited, and we were ramping up our R6 ShieldGuard,” the creative director said. “In a lot of ways it really did help, but we need to be faster when it comes to making sure that we stay one step ahead of cheat makers, too.”
Since the release of the new version, fans have frequently complained about the rise of cheaters in the game. “We’re all tired of playing against cheaters in half our games. All we want is to have fun, rank up, and play fair,” reads one popular post about the situation. “But right now, hacking and exploiting are ruining that entire experience — and Ubisoft is just letting it happen.”
Karpazis explained that eliminating cheating is “absolutely” impossible for any game, and there will always be some cheaters that manage to slip through the crack. “It’s not something where we’ll receive zero percent cheating,” he explained, but added that there’s always “a goal” to make it so that cheating is simply too expensive for most ne’er-do-wells.
“If we stay ahead of cheating and we address it faster and faster, and we make it more expensive for cheat makers so that more and more of them drop out of the cheat making scene… These are the wins,” he said, “and these are ways of making the game a lot more competitive and a lot more fair.”
While the team behind Rainbow Six Siege X are trying hard to reduce cheating, Karpazis explains that there will always be someone attempting to break the rules in order to win, saying: “When somebody can do something to get a competitive edge, they’ll do it, and it can sometimes come at immense cost to them, but they get the satisfaction of winning.”
No matter what “immense psychological gymnastics” the cheater goes through to justify their so-called wins, they will do it, the director explained, and that means that there will always be someone who is trying to ruin your day with a wallhack, aimbot or some other annoying exploit.
