In 2025, we will enter a new era of safety design for digital playgrounds.
Online gaming is where billions of people around the world come together to play, socialize, and relax. However, it is also an environment where harassment, hate speech, violent grooming and sexual exploration frequently occur. Most online game players today have either personally witnessed or reported witnessing one or more of these acts. According to the 2024 report, 82% of players reported being direct victims, and 88% reported witnessing some type of “harmful” behavior. Sexual harassment and hate speech are very common, with more than 70% of game players saying they have witnessed this behavior while playing games.
In the most extreme cases, players face violations of their right to privacy and life, including so-called doxxing, where personal information is maliciously shared online for the purpose of blackmail. For example, in early 2024, a coordinated hate campaign was launched against Sweet Baby Inc., a small narrative design studio. Employees who believed they were pushing a ‘woke agenda’ in gaming through their consulting firm received numerous rape and death threats.
There are many reasons why games are associated with hate and discrimination. However, the most important factor is the lack of innovation across the industry. For example, video games are often left out of regulatory discussions about online safety. Proprietary data ownershipAnd (understandably) no company wants to be the first to talk publicly about online harm and safety issues. Gaming is also a business after all. Talking about your own shortcomings is unlikely to win the support of shareholders.
But in 2025, efforts will finally begin to prioritize safety across the industry. Some of these changes are government mandated. Video games have long been left out of regulatory discussions, but they are subject to some new initiatives recently enacted. For example, the European Union’s Digital Services Act requires gaming companies operating there to submit public transparency reports on online harm in their spaces and the effectiveness of tools to combat it. For the first time, this will provide industry-wide insight into strategies and their effectiveness across the gaming ecosystem.
In 2025, the gaming industry’s attempts at self-regulation will also begin to have an effect. Over the past few years, there have been many trust and safety initiatives driven by the gaming industry itself, at an ecosystem, industry level approach. For example, in 2024, the Thriving in Games Group launched the Digital Thriving Playbook. This playbook provides game developers with training materials and a step-by-step guide on how to create more resilient communities and approach issues of trust and safety. In the game. It also includes guidance on content moderation and community management approaches, as well as teamwork by design, trust by design, and building prosocial behavior in gaming communities.
Last year, another achievement was achieved through a partnership between Epic Games and the International Age Rating Coalition to give internationally recognized ratings to all user-generated content created. fortnite. Historically, player-generated content has not been rated, so users are essentially forced to make their best guess at age appropriateness from experience names, images, and descriptions. Integrating a rating system into your user-generated content allows players (and parents) to make more informed decisions about what and how to play. By 2025, other game creators will follow suit to support players’ ability to make informed choices about which of the (billions of) user-generated content is safe and appropriate to engage with.
To be clear, a safe community does not mean there is no risk. Hate, bullying and other forms of social harm will always exist in some form online. But by 2025, the video game industry will finally have a more cohesive safety strategy in place to better protect players from societal harm. As the world’s largest media sector, the video game industry is long overdue for such innovation and prioritization of player safety and well-being. In my view, 2025 will be a transformative year that will set new standards for safety in the digital playground.
