Rainbow Six Siege Cannot Ban Keyboard and Mouse on Consoles

For a while now, the Rainbow Six Siege community on consoles has been requesting Ubisoft to level the playing field by banning keyboards and mice.

For a while now, the Rainbow Six Siege community on consoles has been requesting Ubisoft to level the playing field by banning keyboards and mice.

The two peripherals bring great advantage for players, especially in a game like Rainbow Six Siege that relies on tactical team-based first-person shooting mechanics. By simply dropping money on the purchase of a keyboard and mouse, players on consoles can use high precision and reactive movements to take down opponents limited to traditional controllers.

As far as the Rainbow Six Siege community on consoles is concerned, purchasing peripherals is essentially going pay-to-win. Hence, the reason many have been continuously requesting Ubisoft to somehow prohibit players from doing so.

However, the issue is not that easy for the developer to address. Many emulators and setups that players use to connect peripherals to their consoles are designed to fool the system into believing that they are controllers. This makes it almost impossible for the game to identify inputs and whether someone is using a keyboard and mouse.

Responding to a thread on the official forums, the developer stated that “there is nothing further that can be done” apart from already disabling native support for peripherals.

Rainbow Six Siege is not the only game that has highlighted such concerns. Recently, the console community of Overwatch also requested the development team to take a stance against the use of peripherals. Blizzard response was similar, stating that it is unable to do so without directly involving the console manufacturers.

Sony and Microsoft, though, have not shown that much interest in tackling the problem. All the community can do is drop reminders through the respective support pages of the companies.

What is your take on this whole situation? Do you think console manufacturers should completely disallow support for peripherals or standardize them for the use by everyone?

Saqib is a managing editor at segmentnext.com who has halted regime changes, curbed demonic invasions, and averted at least one cosmic omnicide from the confines of his gaming chair. When not whipping his writers into ...