Yes, Siege is dying

It is dying because of one specific reason: Ubisoft’s inability to deal with cheating. Cheaters are a cancer that’s eating Siege, and it’s been getting worse. The current season has been particularly bad.

In my previous article on the sad, sad state of anti-cheat in Siege I discussed server-side validations. In short, it means that a server shouldn’t allow invalid behaviour from players, like for example, opening reinforced walls with a pistol.

High rank players, notably popular streamers, encounter cheaters basically every single game.

It is worse in high ranks because in Siege knowing where the enemies are is more important that your ability to shoot straight. Therefore cheaters ascend rapidly, and middle ranks are not as infested. Encountering a cheater in gold used to be a rare thing. During the last month, I’ve met at least six blatant wallhackers in unranked matches.

Let’s look at this from another angle. If an average player wants to improve, he basically aspires to play more and more cheaters. What a lovely perspective.

Counter Strike community developed a way to avoid them: better players didn’t play matchmaking, only FaceIt (I’m speaking in a past tense not because the cheating situation got better, but because I stopped playing CS GO a while ago).

I see the same mechanic in Siege now, where people migrate to FaceIt to avoid cheaters. On stream pros play FPL if possible, and competitive players — pros and pro-wannabes — play T3 TMs. The name stands for Tier 3 Ten Mans. Next thing, a FaceIt hub for regular players?

Some don’t stream Siege at all. Escape From Tarkov seems to be a popular substitute. Beaulo and Achieved play Tarkov. Fabian plays Tarkov. Varsity Gaming plays Tarkov.

Looks like many people would jump ships if given an opportunity. Maybe it’s time to accept that for whatever reason Ubisoft cannot curb cheaters, just like Valve.

Remember how once there was only CS GO, and then Riot made Valorant? At the moment I’m writing this, CS GO has 94k viewers on Twitch, and Valorant has 117k viewers (I’m citing Twitch viewership because it’s one of the better ways to gauge current interest in a game, other numbers are hard to come by).

Recently similar situation occured with PUBG. Someone made a PUBG clone, called Super People. It’s in closed beta now, yet it already has 12k viewers on Twitch, while PUBG has 23k viewers.

Maybe some company remakes Siege.