There’s an old saying that goes something like this: Guns don’t kill people, people kill people. Similarly, we can say that it’s the community’s fault for encouraging that toxic competitive behavior. Siege is just a fun game that can help you improve your reflexes and critical thinking.
Staying safe when playing Siege is essential if you want to enjoy the game at its full potential and have a fun, relaxing gaming experience.
For this, we’ll talk about some important matters like:
- Why the Siege community is so toxic
- How to recognize a toxic behavior
- How to avoid toxic players
Why Does Siege Have Such a Toxic Community?
The ugly truth is this doesn’t happen just in Siege. Almost in any shooter game that has a slightly competitive-like vibe, there will be people that go overboard and humiliate other players (their teammates included) or find exploits to win quicker.
And if you’re a woman, multiply that by 10. The gaming community has always put women at a disadvantage either by making sexist remarks, sexualizing them, or treating them like objects.
If you pause for a second and think about it, you’ll realize that not only players do this, but game developers as well. Creating unrealistic fantasy armor for females and males is just one example. Male characters are fully equipped with armor to look intimidating, but women fight half-naked or in bikinis.
Many toxic players abuse others in Siege for quite immature and subjective reasons like you’re not skilled enough, the team would have won without you, or you're speaking English with an accent. Pretty childish, right?!
There’s even a medical term for this – the online inhibition effect. Some people feel safe hiding behind the anonymity that the internet gives you and just yell mean things they otherwise wouldn’t say to someone face to face. They feel like there will be no repercussions for their behavior so they just put on their best monkey costume and embarrass themselves for the whole match.
The average age among Siege community members is around 25 years old. That means you’ll come across an unfortunate combination of kids that are just being mean for no reason and full-grown adults that take their personal problems and frustrations out on you.
How Do You Recognize a Toxic Player?
Here are a few traits and behaviors you can consider to be red flags as soon as you start a match:
- Shooting a teammate
- Abusive language
- Using cheats
- Kicking someone out of the team randomly
- Racist, misogynistic, or homophobic remarks
There were cases when the whole team was toxic, not just one player.
In these conditions, it’s understandable why some players prefer to take a break and stop playing Siege for several months.
How Do You Fight Back Toxic Gamers?
First, you can mute them.
You won’t hear them again, but keep in mind that they can still hear you unless they decide to mute you as well. To do this, go into the Player menu and look for the microphone icon. From there, just select the player you want to mute and a white line should be displayed through the mic.
The mute feature can be used for both opponents and teammates.
Second, you can block them. This can be done in Ubisoft Connect so all you’ll have to do is open the chat icon and search for the name of that player in your Direct Messages section. Next, you select the 3 dots Chat Option icon and block the player.
Alternatively, if you’re in a group chat, you can tap on the 3 dots Chat option icon and select the View Participants options. Choose the chat icon that’s next to the player you want to block and press the block option.
This way, blocked gamers won’t be able to see your private profile or send you direct messages anymore.
Many gamers complained that even though they’ve filled forms or talked with Ubisoft support reps about the toxic players they dealt with, nothing happened. The company didn’t investigate the reports so the toxic players are still somewhere making other players’ lives a nightmare.
They might ban around 3,000 players permanently, but this is just a small number compared to how many people are playing Siege around the globe – 70 million registered accounts.
Ubisoft came up with a few patches that temporarily ban players that are reported for toxic behavior. But the maximum ban time they can get is 2 hours, after that they are back in the match.
Still, considering that a Siege match lasts for about 4 minutes on casual mode, and 3 minutes for ranked – it’s enough to give you a break from them.
One thing is sure – no matter how tempting it might sound, try as much as possible to not say something back to the toxic players. These trolls are eagerly waiting for you to snap, so they can annoy you even more.
When this happens, just remember it’s always best to not feed the trolls so walk away if you happen to meet one. That and open the scoreboard to report them for toxic behavior.
Conclusion
If you ever experienced such toxic behavior, keep in mind that you’re not alone! This is why we try to raise awareness against toxic players in the gaming community.
Filing complaints to Ubisoft has been pretty useless so far, so it’s very important to educate ourselves on this topic. Instead of just waiting for a solution that’s actually efficient from Ubisoft, we should start making Siege a bit safer for the women in our community – that would definitely be a step in the right direction!
Do you have any extra advice on how women can protect themselves in the Siege community? Let us know the comments and let’s build a safer community together!
