I (28M) have recently started playing Rainbow Six Siege again at the behest of my girlfriend (24F) and a group of mutual friends. I’d played Siege a whole bunch during the first two years of content, and was around to see Operation Health in all its “glory”, but for whatever reason, my interest in the game dropped off a cliff. Maybe it was the fact that my aim was never brilliant, or I’d just moved on to other games, but Siege just happened to fall out of my rotation.
Now that I’m back, I’m enjoying myself with the game more than perhaps I ever have. Sure, there’s a lot of new operators, maps and mechanics to deal with (I’m still sad about Tachanka losing his turret, but that’s another story), but after about a week or so with the game, everything has managed to click into place. My aim isn’t much better, but at least people still jump into Frost’s Welcome Mats with an alarming regularity.
One aspect about Siege that hasn’t changed though is the toxicity. Team-killing and griefing has been a part of Siege’s identity ever since the game launched, so being on the receiving end of some backlash from a Gfuel chugging 15-year old isn’t exactly unexpected, especially when I was playing over the Easter holiday. What else were they going to do, spend time with their family? However, there’s been a certain trend of team-killing that’s emerged from certain players as I’ve played: the entitlement to an ace (killing the entire enemy team in one round solo).
During an unranked match on the map Oregon, we were defending Basement and one player managed to kill three of the enemy team. Him and my girlfriend were hunting down the fourth player when he intentionally turned towards her, blasted her in the face and then went and got kill number four. A few matches later on Chalet, I managed to secure a kill through the garage door, but a Doc who had taken out a few enemies beforehand took umbrage with me and decided to turn my head to mush through two walls. The intention was incredibly clear.
For their part, Ubisoft have done their part already to discourage players from intentionally team-killing and griefing. If you receive damage from another teammate, you’re able to vote on whether or not the damage was intentional. If so, reverse friendly fire is activated for that player (or even their entire squad if they’ve all been naughty), meaning any damage inflicted on another friendly player by them is reflected back. Trying to team-kill someone will just lead to them being murdered.
Still, that’s not enough for someone like me, so I’ve decided to take matters into my own hands: you want to team-kill me or my friends, you’ll get it right back. That Oregon match? The douchebag felt the wrath of my Super 90 shotgun, then I won the round anyway. As for the Chalet dick, I got my revenge at the start of the next round, causing their friend to chase me around the map for 30 seconds. When they did finally get a shot off on me, their reverse friendly fire activated mid-spray, causing them to die as they were shooting me. I don’t think I’ve laughed that much in a long time.
While I feel I’m completely justified, there’s probably an argument to be made that doing so ruins the chances of winning for other players on my time, and fighting fire with fire is just creating a scorched earth. That said, people shouldn’t be allowed to run roughshod over a lobby just because someone else might stop them from getting their precious ace, or picking an operator they main. Am I the asshole for team-killing people as revenge in Rainbow Six Siege?
Rainbow Six Siege is available now on PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X | S.
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