Hate and harassment was recorded in almost half of online multiplayer game sessions tested with a range of religious, ethnic and national identity-based usernames, according to the Anti-Defamation League‘s latest research.
One-third of gaming sessions that expressed pride in ethnic, religious or national identity resulted in abuse; and 38% of gaming sessions included harassment toward Jewish people.
Rather than do an annual survey on gaming, the ADL Center for Technology and Society took a different approach to research this year, asking 15 gamers to play hours of games with usernames that signified national, religious and ethnic identities. And they got a lot of hate.
Examples of hate and harassment included racial slurs, trash-talking or disrupted play. Identity-based harassment was present in one-third of play sessions across the four games (Valorant, Counterstrike 2, Overwatch 2 and Fortnite) played by participants (student researchers) using usernames “Proud2bJewish”, “Proud2bMuslim”, “Proud2bChinese”, “Proud2bIsraeli”, and “Proud2bMexican”.
In some sessions, people were not just harassed based on their specific username but also encountered instances of general identity-based harassment or harassment toward multiple other identities.
“The unacceptable normalization of harassment in online games is not only concerning because of how widespread it is and because so many teens and young people are exposed to hate in these spaces, but also because of the intensity of the verbal abuse we’ve recorded,” said Jonathan Greenblatt, ADL CEO, in a statement. “Hearing phrases such as ‘gas the Jews’, calling people the ‘n-word’ or seeing a player named Hitler is not inconsequential; it’s pure, unabashed hatred and gaming companies need to step up and make it stop.”
Among the four games tested, Valorant and Counterstrike 2 stood out for resulting in some type of harassment in about two-thirds of the game sessions; half had identity-based harassment. Overwatch 2 and Fortnite, in contrast, showed the least amount of identity-based harassment (8% for Overwatch 2 and 20% for Fortnite).
In Valorant and Counterstrike 2, over half (57%) of the play sessions with the ‘Proud2bJewish’ username included some level of Jewish identity-based harassment.
ADL has been investigating hate and harassment—as well as prosocial behavior—in online multiplayer games since 2019. Six out of ten people (ages 5-90) in the U.S. play video games, according to the Entertainment Software Association , and there are over 3 billion players around the world. In 2023 , ADL found that 76 percent of adult participants (aged 18-45) and 75 percent of teens (ages 10-17) in online multiplayer games reported experiencing any harassment in online games.
“As increasing numbers of people engage in online gaming spaces, we need to find ways to minimize disruptive behavior, hate and harassment,” said Daniel Kelley, interim head & director of strategy and operations at the ADL Center for Technology and Society, in a statement. “The gaming industry and government have a responsibility to make sure people feel safe while engaging in competitive online gaming. As shown in our research, these spaces can lead to prosocial behavior, which should not be overshadowed by the rampant abuse we’re recording. At the same time, it’s alarming that one of the main responses across all participants in the study was that they expected there to be even more hate than there was.”
I interviewed Kelley and we talkd about the nuances of the research. The report also included detailed recommendations for the gaming industry, government, researchers and caregivers. The full list is available at the end of the report.
“These are transient spaces,” said Kelley. “When you’re talking about a match-based game, like Counter-Strike or Fortnite, those spaces exist for a few minutes and then disappear. So the ability for researchers to understand those spaces is really limited. And so what we did here was have a bunch of participants play a bunch of major online multiplayer games using a variety of usernames that express pride in a particular identity and recorded those sessions.”
The result wasn’t nationally representative sample as needed for a survey. But the sessions produced qualitative data of what is it like to bring your identity into an online game and how do people in that community respond to it.
“Half of the participants roughly are experiencing some form of hate,” Kelley said. “What was interesting is the participants who are students or recent graduates said they thought there would be more reaction to them. The reputation of online games as social spaces is such that they imagined that it would be an expectation of there being hate.”
Since the Gaza war started on October 7, 2023, anti-Israeli or anti-Jewish hate has been on the rise, Kelley said. But this study did not focus on that in particular.
“What we see here is a continuing trend and a continuing manifestation of the rise in anti-Semitism that we’ve seen across the world. Certainly since the events of 10-7-2023. But I think you see sort of the naked expression of it in these spaces,” Kelley said. “They’re communicating with someone whose username says Proud2bJewish or Proud2bIsraeli, and the people’s reaction to that at times is ‘get in the ovens,’” he said.
The ADL did not look at anti-Palestinian behavior in this particular study. Kelley said that there would be more work in the surveys of the future.
Recommendations for industry
- Implement industry-wide policy and design practices to better address how hate targets specific identities.
- Incentivize and promote prosocial behavior through design.
- Rather than reducing Trust & Safety headcount, as many companies have done in 2023 and 2024, companies must expand resources in this important area.
- Improve reporting systems and support for targets of harassment.
- Strengthen content-moderation tools for in-game voice chat.
- Release regular, consistent transparency reports on hate and harassment.
Recommendations for government:
In February 2024, ADL released its annual report Hate is No Game: Hate and Harassment in
Online Games 2023 in which the need for governments to take a more active role in fighting
hate and harassment in games was highlighted.
In particular, Kelley said the ADL has supported laws against SWAT attacks, where people call police SWAT teams on players’ homes, or doxing, where players publish the personal info of other players.
The ADL recommended:
- Prioritize transparency legislation in digital spaces and include online multiplayer games.
- Enhance access to justice for victims of online abuse.
- Establish a National Gaming Safety Task Force.
- Resource research efforts.
Methodology
In late 2023 through summer 2024, a diverse group of students, recent graduates, and young adults participated as a game players in four online competitive first-person shooter games (Valorant, Counterstrike 2, Fortnite, and Overwatch 2) with the usernames Proud2BJewish, Proud2BMuslim, Proud2BIsraeli, Proud2BMexican, Proud2BChinese.
The students recorded their almost 250 hours of cumulative gameplay and experiences after each hour of gameplay.
ADL is the leading anti-hate organization in the world. Founded in 1913, its timeless mission is “to stop the defamation of the Jewish people and to secure justice and fair treatment to all.” Today, ADL continues to fight all forms of antisemitism and bias, using innovation and partnerships to drive impact.
The group has been doing surveys of hate and harassment in online games since 2019. One of the challenging things about doing the surveys is the industry itself doesn’t share data, Kelley said. The ADL has pushed the game companies like Activision to put anti-extremist policies into their codes of conduct.
Kelley said there was a very cifferent experience in Valorant and Counter-Strike 2 than in Overwatch 2 and Fortnite.
“I think Overwatch 2 and Fortnite have done a bit more around policy, around design, to prevent hate and harassment in these spaces. Whereas, you see less so among Counter-Strike. I think Valve is way behind the game industry, broadly.”
There are some game companies like Activision and Roblox that have been using AI to crack down on toxic behavior in games. Activision uses AI to screen for spoken violations of its standards while Roblox can send warnings to people using foul language. Those companies have been aggressive. Activision has also had to crack down a lot on cheaters.
By contrast, Elon Musk’s X (formerly Twitter) has dropped fact-checking in favor of community comments, and Meta’s Facebook is dropping fact-checking in favor of something similar. That’s in part happening because of a change in ownership or a change in political leadership in the White House and Congress.
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