When streaming games like Rainbow Six Siege, one of the problems is stream sniping. It ruins the game not only for the streamer but pretty much for everyone else as well, except of course to the one doing the sniping. The problem is concerning enough that the game’s development team is now looking for ways to prevent it from happening.
While it is indeed important to stop stream sniping, the team revealed in a post that player protection isn’t limited to streamers but to the whole community.
One solution that the team is looking into is player privacy. In particular, there will be a new section in the Options menu called “Privacy.” What it does is to give players more gameplay privacy while retaining their legacy name. It also hopes to ensure that these same players no longer need to create multiple accounts, or change account names to avoid stream snipers.
Here are the options set to be part of this new protection:
- Appear as Nickname
- This allows players to create and use a custom temporary display name which can then be used directly in-game without losing their legacy name.
- Custom names are not cross-linked and can be changed at any time.
- This should add more friction to malicious players’ process of grieving.
- Appear as “You”
- Typically, a player’s legacy and alternative generated names can be a primary indicator used by malicious players to follow them from match to match.
- To lower any collateral effects, this option replaces the player's name on their screen with “You.”
- This way, somebody viewing their live stream, for example, won’t be able to determine their displayed username.
- Hide Other Players
- The use of surrounding information is also part of the problem and can aid in the identification of a specific match.
- To address this issue, this option generates pseudonyms for all usernames on the streamer’s screen in a match session except their own.
- This applies not only to teammates but even the opponents in the match.
- Account Identity Privacy
- The team plans on testing an experimental iteration of account privacy settings to conceal the Ubisoft account name (with a randomly generated username) and profile avatar of users to protect their name on the platform.
- This should prevent stream snipers from using third-party tools to reveal streamer identities.
- The team revealed that depending on the success of the test, it may not be available for public release.
These new features are planned to be released during Season 4 but not at the season launch.
Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six Siege is available on PC, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S.
