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Ubisoft’s MouseTrap system for detecting cheaters in Rainbow Six Siege is already seeing results. Cheaters use devices like XIM to spoof controller inputs, and MouseTrap has now caused a “major reduction” of more than 70 percent in the amount of mouse and keyboard users on consoles.
The team behind MouseTrap has provided an update on the progress of the detection system, nearly three months after it was first added to Rainbow Six Siege earlier this year. “There has been a 78 percent reduction in the total spoofers (Mouse and Keyboard users) detected in Rainbow Six Siege,” explains Ubisoft in a blog post today. “If we look at Ranked on its own, the reduction is similar; 73 percent fewer spoofers than before.
Ubisoft had predicted a reduction of between 30 and 50 percent, so “the data we’ve gathered has surpassed these expectations and has shown a major reduction in the amount of Mouse and Keyboard users on consoles.” This means that a majority of cheaters have simply turned off devices like XIM, Cronus Zen, and ReaSnow S1, which are often used in online competitive shooters to allow mouse and keyboard users to get the benefits of aim assist from a controller mixed with the benefits of movement from mouse and keyboard.
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Ubisoft has been messing with cheaters that use these third-party devices by applying extra latency to disrupt their aim and movement. This degraded experience has clearly forced many to simply stop using the devices as a result.
It hasn’t been all easy going for the MouseTrap team, though. Ubisoft admits that there was an exploit that it patched in late June that allowed people to avoid the MouseTrap penalties. It’s a constant cat-and-mouse game against the developers of third-party cheating hardware, so it’s reasonable to assume there will be other workarounds and exploits coming in the future. “We will continue to monitor, update, and tune the system and penalties for future seasons so that console players can be confident that their opponents do not have an unfair advantage,” says the MouseTrap team.
The problem of third-party cheating devices isn’t unique to Rainbow Six Siege, either. Epic Games started issuing permanent bans to players using Cronus Zen and Cronus Max last year, and Bungie has now updated its Destiny 2 terms of use to potentially ban players who “abuse these tools specifically to gain an advantage over other players.”
