Online Safety and the Regulation of Gaming Platforms and Services

The document examines how the global gaming industry's social features and design vulnerabilities are exploited by extremist and malign actors. It analyzes the applicability of major regulations like the EU's Digital Services Act and the UK's Online Safety Act to gaming companies and recommends increased data transparency, consistent policy enforcement, and 'Safety by Design' principles to mitigate harms.

• Hate and harassment are pervasive in online gaming, with a 2023 ADL survey indicating that 48 percent of women gamers reported targeting based on their gender, and 70 percent of Jewish-American adults reported harassment.
• Extremist groups utilize gaming platforms for recruitment and radicalization, often using less-moderated in-game chats to identify sympathetic individuals through discriminatory jokes before moving them to private settings.
• Foreign Information Manipulation and Interference (FIMI) in gaming involves tactics such as reframing reality using game imagery, interactive propaganda, and psychographic targeting to influence target groups.
• Specific design vulnerabilities in games, such as user-generated 'mods' and 'skins', are exploited to create extremist propaganda or simulate hateful environments, such as Nazi concentration camps in Roblox and Minecraft.
• The EU's Digital Services Act (DSA) applies a tiered system of obligations to gaming services based on their function (intermediary, hosting, or platform) and size, though the European Commission has noted uncertainty regarding how specific games are categorized.
• The UK's Online Safety Act (2023) classifies gaming platforms that enable user-to-user interaction as 'U2U' services, mandating duties of care to protect users, especially children, from illegal and harmful content.
• Australia's Online Safety Act (2021) includes 'relevant electronic services' such as online gaming platforms and establishes Basic Online Safety Expectations (BOSE) for industry transparency and accountability.
• In the US, the proposed Kids Online Safety Act (KOSA) suggests a duty of care for platforms used by minors, though a 2024 House version would limit these requirements to 'high impact online companies' with at least $2.5 billion USD in annual revenue or 150 million monthly active users.
• The EU's Terrorist Content Online (TCO) Regulation requires Hosting Service Providers to remove terrorist content within one hour of receiving a removal order from Member State authorities.
• There is a critical lack of data access for independent researchers, as many gaming companies are reluctant to share in-game communication data, hindering the ability to systematically track extremist activity.

APA

Institute for Strategic Dialogue (2024). Online Safety and the Regulation of Gaming Platforms and Services. https://www.isdglobal.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/10/Online-Safety-and-the-Regulation-of-Gaming-Platforms-and-Services.pdf

Chicago

Institute for Strategic Dialogue. Online Safety and the Regulation of Gaming Platforms and Services. 2024. https://www.isdglobal.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/10/Online-Safety-and-the-Regulation-of-Gaming-Platforms-and-Services.pdf.

Wikipedia

{{cite report |author=Institute for Strategic Dialogue |title=Online Safety and the Regulation of Gaming Platforms and Services |date=2024 |url=https://www.isdglobal.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/10/Online-Safety-and-the-Regulation-of-Gaming-Platforms-and-Services.pdf |access-date=23 October 2026 |via=Climate Insights Directory}}

BibTeX

@techreport{instituteforstrategicdialogue2024online, author = {{Institute for Strategic Dialogue}}, title = {{Online Safety and the Regulation of Gaming Platforms and Services}}, institution = {Institute for Strategic Dialogue}, year = {2024}, url = {https://www.isdglobal.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/10/Online-Safety-and-the-Regulation-of-Gaming-Platforms-and-Services.pdf}, urldate = {2026-10-23}, note = {Indexed by Climate Insights Directory} }