Rainbow Six: Hope for Levo – CTZN has also been banned for cheating

Montreal, Monday, July 12, 2021 We imagine a crisis meeting happening at Ubisoft’s headquarters. The meeting chair took the floor in a trembling voice: “Guys, we have a problem. We have banned an account from CTZN.” An oppressive silence enveloped the room.

Of course, whether or not this scenario is realistic is debatable, but it is entirely conceivable that our mind game will at least partially become a reality. But what happened?

Yesterday, Monday, there was a message on Twitter that G2 Esports star player Ben ‘CTZN’ McMillan’s Smurf account has been suspended. A professional athlete’s Rainbow Six Siege account fell victim to an anti-cheat system a few days after the much-discussed incident involving GSA player Furat ‘Levolution’ Hisan due to very high stats.

No response from Ubisoft

A few hours before the opening game of the sixth day of the EUL match, which the England team played as captains against unKnights (former TrainHard eSport squad), many questions were raised about the 22-year-old’s future. Will he play? Will he be banned from the European League? Does CTZN expect the same penalty as Levolution for PENTA?

One thing is for sure, CTZN will compete for G2 Esports at 6pm. However, it is also certain that only one authority can provide answers to this question: Ubisoft. However, the development studio behind the tactical shooter has been silent, at least at the time of writing. The reason for this move seems clear – any official announcement that Ubisoft will make on this topic can be discussed. Every decision Ubisoft makes is likely to experience frustration or misunderstanding. Any official statement is likely to make the development studio appear unreasonable and inappropriate.

In this regard, we remind you that no one should treat company employees with hatred, disrespect or insult. Current events should not be a breeding ground for inappropriate behavior. At this point, we’re referring to our article “Why Gamers Complain about Game Harm,” which shows how spreading gamers’ hatred toward a game can negatively impact its development.

Example from the community:

CTZN Smurfs has been banned
ahahahaha Tweet embed Wake up you fucker, and stop stopping people from getting a whole bunch of useless PLEBS. get up.

Thousands of legitimate players have been banned due to the incompetence of Ubisoft. This game will end in two seasons. pic.twitter.com/0d1r1Hm7xu

Plerto 12 July 2021

Recap: Autumn Fall – Statistical Ban

As mentioned before, the effects of the ban on CTZN and therefore its future remain uncertain. For Ubisoft, there are three ways to respond to the lock within the game, and as mentioned earlier, the three variants are not very positive from the developer’s point of view. However, before we delve into these potential reactions in more detail, let’s look briefly at the events of the past week.

On Thursday, July 8, 2021, PENTA player Virat ‘Levolution’ Hisan, aka ‘Levo’, was banned from Ubisoft for nearly a year from the GSA League for cheating. The ban was followed by a call from the Rainbow Six community, who wanted to counter the seemingly unjustified ban using the hashtag #FreeLevo. This ban was the result of extremely high statistics on an alternate account. An 80 percent head injury rate should be critical to ban.

On Friday, July 9, 2021, Ubisoft released another message stating that Levo was banned due to performance indicators and toxicity. These indicators were found during a manual check by a Ubisoft employee. The positive thing about the report is that Ubisoft agreed to speculation with the wording of “performance indicators” and indirectly confirmed that Levolution stats led to the ban – after all, performance indicators are determined and recorded statistically. The terms “performance indicators” and “statistics” are somewhat synonymous with each other.

Synopsis: Autumn Fall

The second report from July 9 received stronger resistance from the community due to the above findings. Many also wondered where the aforementioned toxicity indicator suddenly came from and how toxic behavior could justify a ban for cheating. The community agreed, the situation seemed clear: Ubisoft made a mistake and banned a deserving e-sportsman for above-average stats typical of professional athletes. In addition, the aforementioned second report appeared as a justification or an attempt to save face.

The idea arose that Ubisoft realized that Levo should never be banned and that the ban according to statistics was flawed. If you follow these ideas, Ubisoft knows that its system wrongly bans legitimate players. If the company had scrapped the publicly announced ban on Levolution, it wouldn’t just admit a bug or a flawed system.

Any ban that has been in place on this system since its inception can be challenged if Ubisoft admits that there was an error blocking Levo. Furthermore, the management of the GSA seemed implausible and there were gaps in the rule set.

If you’d like to read more about what happened last week regarding levolution, you can do so using our article “Wrongly Banned? – The Levolution Issue”.

Sixth Rainbow: Forbidden Error? – Evolution case

The future of CTZN and its consequences for Ubisoft and Levolution

If we look at the case of CTZN after looking at the case of Levolution, we see that there are many similarities. CTZN has been banned from the alt/Smurf account. Here too, stats are assumed to be the decisive cause. In addition, participation in the GSA League and the European League is also at risk for CTZN. According to the rules applicable to Levolutions mode, CTZN must be disqualified from competitive matches in all competitions for a period of one year, as the penalty for the offense applies to all player accounts.

Disclaimer: Before we get into the three possible ways of dealing with the situation, it should be clear that Levolution’s alleged toxic behavior must be dealt with separately. If one wants to justify a one-year disqualification from competitive competitions, this must represent a significant extent.

So let’s talk about the three options already mentioned that Ubisoft has to respond to with the current situation and discuss the consequences of these actions:

1. Ubisoft bans CTZN for 1 year

This action can cause severe esports damage to Rainbow Six Siege. CTZN is one of the most famous and talented players on the scene. He is the top dragger in the hugely popular esports organization G2 Esports, and he is currently with his team captain in EUL – the top European league. It is clear that the scope and number of fans and supporters at CTZN exceeds the number of supporters of Levos. Measured by Twitter followers, it is ~52300 to ~2100 for an Englishman. How much of a backlash Ubisoft, a CTZN supporter, could get if the development studio actually banned Fragger, it would be a huge challenge for Rainbow Six Siege and esports. Ubisoft will have to face heavy criticism in all likelihood. Especially since the ban is due to the much discussed statistics-based anti-cheat system.

2. Ubisoft bans Levolution, CTZN will not be banned

Speaking of massive criticism: the dev studio will likely face this as well if they don’t ban CTZN. Despite avoiding criticism from its supporters, the company will destroy its competitive integrity. The same can then be transferred to Rainbow Six e-sports if it is given the impression that rules and competition management are measured by two different standards. This would be the case if Levolution remained blocked while CTZN was not. No member of the Rainbow Six Siege esports scene would approve of such contradictory behaviour.

3. Do not block Ubisoft Levolution or CTZN

The decision that would cause the least harm to a development studio with reasonable connectivity would be, in my opinion, if the Levolution lock were reversed so that the CTZN would not have to be closed afterwards. An explanation and apology must be found for Levolution, while at the same time Ubisoft explains to its players that they cannot review and undo every possible wrongful ban based on stats. In addition, the company will have to publicly admit that the detection of fraud by statistics is not reliable and the system should not continue to be used in this ideal model.

The damage would be inevitable if Ubisoft was at least temporarily untrustworthy and unreliable. Implementing an anti-cheat system, improperly banning a player, continuing to view it as correct, banning another player, admitting it is flawed, and unblocking both players may not make a good impression. However, if we look at the above two scenarios, we find that this may be a consequence in any case. However, the damage to esports, upon which the success of Rainbow Six Siege depends, will be relatively insignificant, since one will not completely lose competitive integrity by judging two identical states of differently known players.

Avoid long-term consequences

People make mistakes and people forgive mistakes. Acceptance damage may be the most short-lived consequence of this thread, while the two above-mentioned scenarios could ruin the shooter’s e-sports reputation in the long run.

It is hard to imagine that ambitious and talented young players trying to succeed in a game in which they have to be afraid at all times that despite their fair play they can be banned and not get support from the developer because of their performance.

So far, Ubisoft has given the impression that saving face is more important than a young man’s life. However, an esports title cannot grow or last for long if players have Responsible person do not trust. Players do not put their future in the hands of people whose reputation is more important than competitive integrity.

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