Ubisoft will take action against Siege players who "abuse AFK methods".
Ubisoft is taking action against players abusing AFK methods in Rainbow Six Siege and will consider "design changes" and "new automatic AFK detections and enforcement" to address this issue, according to a tweet yesterday. Punishment can include suspension and bans.
Ubisoft has announced that "our player will not tolerate bad players that spoil the game experience". The first step in the plan to resolve the AFK issue was a "wave of manual enforcement" against accounts that abused these methods, starting from the moment of the announcement. It is unclear how severe these sanctions will be.
According to the tweet, Ubisoft will consider "automatic AFK detections and enforcement" as well as design changes to help with the issue in the coming weeks. “Sanctions” is the term Ubisoft uses to describe penalties, including temporary and possibly permanent bans.
According to the announcement, AFK Farming is a rising problem for Siege. Players mislead the system by using bots, macros and other methods every few seconds to move their characters every few seconds to avoid being kicked out of the game due to inactivity. This allows AFK players to receive Renown, XP and other rewards without participating in matches.
Players need to bring their account to the minimum level of 50 to play competitive matches, they can use AFK Farming to reduce this hassle. It means that players who want a Smurf account can use this method to access competitive modes, putting their team at a strong disadvantage in the process. AFK Farming can also be used to gain extra Fame at the end of the match, a resource used to unlock Operators and skins.
Ubisoft's latest moves show a push against this behavior, which may gain even more strength due to additional measures coming out of the company's assessments. Ubisoft has also asked the community to report players who engage in AFK Farming in-game, possibly as a step to bolster the first wave of manual enforcement.