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Twitch, Blizzard and more form Fair Play Alliance in hopes to combat gaming toxicity

مارس 26, 2018

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A new alliance has been formed by more than 30 companies seeking to better control online gaming communities, hoping to reduce the amount of harassment and toxicity between players

The Fair Play Alliance has been formed by high-profile companies such as Blizzard, Epic Games, Twitch, and Xbox. The goal, according to the coalition’s mission statement, is to “encourage fair play and healthy communities,” in online gaming.

“We envision a world where games are free of harassment, discrimination, and abuse, and where players can express themselves through play,” reads the statement.

Another goal of the Fair Play Alliance is to raise awareness of player-behavior-related issues, and “share research and best practices that drive lasting change.”

More and more companies have been taking a stand against harassment and toxicity over the last few years. It’s not just other community members who have felt the brunt of hostility for one reason or another online, but many developers are reluctant to engage in discourse with game communities with the result being quite a lot of hostility and harassment, and the possibility of being doxxed. Some developers have even received death threats over something as silly as how it rebooted a game or withdrawing a game from an online store.

Few companies have been intolerant of toxic behavior. Microsoft has a code of conduct for Xbox Live users, Blizzard has been putting the hammer down hard on bad behavior of late in Overwatch, and another example of companies becoming less tolerant of toxic members is Ubisoft with improvements to its Rainbow Six Siege chat system, which now bans players who use “racial and homophobic slurs, or hate speech” while they’re playing the game.

Hopefully, the developers, publishers and tech companies can find a way to encourage their community members not to act like raving jerks. However, stemming the tide of terrible behavior online is, and will remain, an uphill battle for the foreseeable future.

Over 30 gaming companies are represented, including: