Thoughts on R6 ShieldGuard Secure Platform Pre-Ranked 3.0

It is my view that Secure Boot (one of the requirements/measures being introduced as part of R6 ShieldGuard Secure Platform with the Legends division), while a step in the right direction, won't be enough. Ubi have said that they plan to test the Platform with a subset of Legend players preceding a broader rollout here. This to me tells cheat developers and users that they can (at least until shortly after the broader rollout) keep doing what they're doing without consequence up to the Legends division which is, unless they want people to cheat up to if not into Legend for analysis purposes, concerning.

I personally want to see TPM made necessary alongside Secure Boot, similar to what Riot Games have done with Vanguard. As controversial as Vanguard and TPM have been (both in this community and elsewhere), productive utilisation of TPM succeeds where other solutions have failed to combat DMA and HWID spoofing which have both been observed numerous times throughout Siege's lifetime. Ignore the "waaah BIOS scary"/"TPM bricked my mobo"/"big corpo spyware" arguments and accept that cheating is a very modern problem actively leaning on and profiting from a lack of modern solutions. Use every tool available to preserve the integrity of competitive play.

Limiting these requirements to Ranked modes is in my view another step in the right direction. Since adopting the F2P model (for the non-competitive modes), cheat developers have essentially received free debugging tools. By limiting the new Platform's requirements to the "competitive/paid" player-base, cheat developers can spend time testing for free all they want in F2P modes only to get shafted after paying for the full game and enabling Secure Boot and MFA (and ideally TPM). Sure, cheating might run rampant in the casual playlists as a result, but I believe that most players bothering to shell out for actively-updated cheats (pros included) are doing so to get a competitive edge which is irrelevant in non-competitive modes. This is to say that cheating would likely spike initially in F2P before decreasing due to lack of interest and likely becoming too expensive for the average degenerate.

In summary, it is my view that if Siege's competitive setting is to be taken seriously moving forward:

1. Secure Boot isn't enough.
2. TPM utilisation is necessary.
3. A call on whether ShieldGuard Secure Platform should govern non-competitive modes as well as competitive counterparts needs to be made, as while both approaches have their pros and cons, changing gears later down the line would likely be more divisive than not.