In an effort to "contain the impact of players abusing the friendly fire mechanic", Ubisoft has launched a trial of a Reverse Friendly Fire feature on their Rainbow Six Siege testing realm.
Announced in a Developer Blog released earlier this week, the feature release is aiming to "address toxicity". The system, which can now be tested by trial-realm participants, allows players that have been team-killed to either forgive the offending teammate or elect to punish them for the offence.
"The goal of this system is to contain the impact of players abusing the friendly fire mechanic while maintaining a degree of flexibility for accidents," a Ubisoft representative revealed in the Dev Blog post.
"We [Ubisoft] will collect data and feedback from both ranked and casual playlists on the Test Server, and iterate before releasing it live.
"We will continue to address toxicity as we proceed into Year 4 and beyond. We look forward to hearing your feedback and findings on the Reverse Friendly Fire system."
In recent times, team-killing has carried with it the heavy penalty of a temporary or permanent ban to the offender's account, with no leniency on whether the act of killing a teammate was deliberate griefing, or simply an accidental spray catching a friendly Operator out in a skirmish or wild team fight.
The new validation system looks to move the onus away from an automated system, and instead give player's the power to forgive the offenders if it was accidental, or even just a friendly jest in a dominant round between premade friends.
Offenders killing their teammates will now activate the Reverse Friendly Fire system, which switches the damage onto the offending player instead of the unsuspecting teammate about to be gunned down before the round has even begun.
The system, which registers players who have griefed in the past through these player-made reports, will be dealing all team-based damage to themselves instead of their allies, potentially even killing themselves in the process.
The idea of the new system is to contain toxic griefs on the servers that can have an individual effect on the game, even deciding the result if they take enough of their teammates with them with their team-killing.
For many who play Siege competitively on the ranked ladder, this is a welcome change. Ubisoft has long been in the firing line for allowing griefers too much power with their title's team-killing element. While realistic, many believed it was a step too far towards allowing online trolls the power to dictate games.
Now, Ubisoft has answered back with a near-perfect answer. All that remains now is to see if the Live Test Server will offer up whether this move is a positive one, or just simply a step in the right direction for the game developers.
You can weigh in on the new system on the official Ubisoft/Siege forums, or on the official Rainbow Six Siege subreddit.