In 2025 we will enter a new era of safety by design for our digital playgrounds.
Online games are spaces where billions of people worldwide come together to play, socialize, and unwind. However, they are also environments where harassment, hate speech, and grooming for violence and sexual exploration frequently occur. Today, most players of online games report being a direct target or witnessing one or more of these actions. A 2024 report found 82 percent of players report being a direct victim, and 88 percent report witnessing some form of so-called “toxic” behavior. Sexual harassment and hate speech are quite common, with more than 70 percent of game players saying they have witnessed these behaviors while gaming.
In the most extreme cases, players face violations of privacy and their right to life, for instance, when their private personal information is maliciously shared online for the purpose of intimidation—so-called doxxing. In early 2024, for instance, an organized hate campaign started against the small narrative design studio Sweet Baby Inc. Believed to be pushing a “woke agenda” in games with their consultancy, their employees received numerous rape and death threats.
There are a number of reasons why games have come to be associated with hate and discrimination. The most important factor, however, is the lack of industry-wide innovation. For instance, video games are often sidelined in regulatory conversations about online safety. Proprietary data is proprietary, and (understandably) no company wants to be the first to talk publicly about online harms and safety challenges. Games are also, at the end of the day, businesses. Talking about one’s shortcomings is not likely to be something that garners shareholder support.
However, in 2025, we’ll finally start to see industry-wide efforts prioritizing safety. Some of these shifts will be due to government mandates. While video games have long been excluded from regulatory conversations, they are beholden to some of the new initiatives that have recently been enacted. For example, the Digital Services Act in the European Union requires gaming companies who operate there to submit public-facing transparency reports about online harms within their spaces and the efficacy of their tools to combat them. For the first time, this will allow for industry-wide insights into the strategies and their effectiveness across the gaming ecosystem.
In 2025, we will also start to see the effects of the game industry’s attempts at self-regulation. Over the last several years, there have been many trust and safety initiatives spearheaded by the game industry itself from an ecosystem, industry-level approach. For example, in 2024 we saw the release of the Digital Thriving Playbook from the Thriving in Games Group, which provides educational material and step-by-step guides for game developers on how to create more resilient communities, and approaches to trust and safety issues in games. It also includes guides 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 also saw another breakthrough, with the partnership between Epic Games and the International Age Rating Coalition to create internationally recognized ratings for all user-generated content created for Fortnite. Historically, player-created content has been unrated, leaving users to essentially make their best guess on age-appropriateness from the experience name, image, and description. The integration of a ratings system on user generated content will allow players (and parents) to make more informed decisions as to what and how they will play. In 2025, other game makers will follow suit to support players’ ability to make informed choices about which (of the billions of pieces of) user-generated content is safe and appropriate for them to engage with.
To be clear, a safe community does not mean there is no risk. Hate, harassment, and other forms of social harm will always exist in some form or another online. But in 2025, the video game industry will finally have more cohesive safety strategies in place to better protect players from social harm. As the largest media sector in the world, the video game industry is long overdue for this innovation, and for prioritization of player safety and wellbeing. As I see it, 2025 promises to be a transformative year that sets a new standard for safety in our digital playgrounds.
