These days, there are few bright lines between gaming and the rest of our digital lives. The distinction between them has blurred, as interactions between players do not stay within the game but play out across the internet through streaming and in all varieties of chats and channels.
Since abuse is not contained within games and can move across platforms, no single company has a full picture of what goes on. Therefore, collaboration across industries is imperative.
This article explores resources and opportunities that can help developers align with other digital industry companies to keep players safe.
How to adopt a cross-industry approach to trust and safety
In gaming, perhaps more than any other industry, we want to create diverse digital experiences that range from safe spaces for young children all the way to intentionally edgy games that enthrall adults. Industry efforts like the Entertainment Ratings Software Board help differentiate game content for consumers but cannot guarantee what user-generated content or conduct may take place.
In the past five years, there has been an evolution of the trust and safety ecosystem, with several new institutions and organizations bringing tech companies and others with a stake in trust and safety together. The Digital Trust & Safety Partnership is unique among those organizations, uniting companies that provide diverse products and services around a shared approach to trust and safety.
Rather than trying to proscribe particular community guidelines, DTSP brings together companies around the practices they use to address online risks. These are organized under five overarching commitments:
- Identify, evaluate, and adjust for content- and conduct-related risks in product development.
- Adopt explainable processes for product governance, including which team is responsible for creating rules and how rules are evolved.
- Conduct enforcement operations to implement product governance.
- Assess and improve processes associated with content- and conduct-related risks.
- Ensure that relevant trust and safety policies are published to the public, and report periodically to the public and other stakeholders regarding actions taken.
By organizing around practices instead of content, DTSP is a way of enabling companies, including game developers, to pursue their unique game designs and approaches to community management while still setting a standard of excellence for trust and safety.
It’s dangerous to go alone: Take these best practices
All of the companies that participate in DTSP embrace its five commitments, but they can use any combination of the DTSP Best Practices that makes sense for their product. The 35 best practices that support the commitments are examples of good practice, but they are far from exclusive or exhaustive:
Here are a few examples of what these practices mean in plain language:
| Best Practice | Definition | In Other Words… |
| Trust & Safety Consultation | Include trust and safety team or equivalent stakeholder in the product development process at an early stage, including through communication and meetings, soliciting and incorporating feedback as appropriate | Trust and safety is built into how new product features are developed, not just tacked on at the end |
| User Focused Product Management | Institute processes for taking user considerations into account when drafting and updating relevant Product Governance | There is someone (or a team) responsible for advocating for users as part of the policy development process |
| Advanced Detection | Where feasible and appropriate, identify areas where advance detection, and potentially intervention, is warranted | We’re able to proactively detect harmful content or conduct |
The flexibility of the DTSP framework is deliberate. Game designers may have their own practices through which they can fulfill the commitments, and we encourage the identification and sharing of innovative, sector-specific best practices that align with the commitments.
All of these commitments and practices are means of implementing Safety by Design, proactively thinking about safe and trustworthy online experiences from the very beginning of the development lifecycle.
Proportionate ways of scaling trust and safety
DTSP is creating a coalition of companies across the tech sector, including gaming, dating, social media, streaming, and messaging, that embraces the differences between these products. Fundamental to that approach is creating reasonable requirements of smaller companies.
Through this coalition, DTSP has created an approach to evaluating trust and safety practices, the Safe Framework, that understands the concerns of smaller studios. This framework allows for proportionate approaches that can be applied by everyone, from indie studios to the largest developers.
Common challenges in need of collaborative solutions
Despite the close connections between gaming and related digital platforms like Discord and Twitch, the gaming community has not yet engaged fully with industry partners on trust and safety and tech policy. The result is missed opportunities for gaming to share innovative approaches as well as to learn from peers across the industry.
This is starting to change, with gaming companies joining organizations like the Tech Coalition and participating in industry events such as TrustCon and the Family Online Safety Institute Conference. But much more can be done to integrate gaming perspectives into trust and safety across the wider digital industry and to educate policymakers as they consider regulation.
Combating Online Child Sexual Exploitation and Abuse in Gaming
A resource to help companies discuss how they will combat OCSEA.
Obstacles to overcome
There is no shortage of reasons why game developers might want to keep their distance from other digital sectors:
- The gaming industry is complex enough on its own, and it may prefer to start with conversations “inside the tent” before expanding outward.
- Gaming has had its share of controversies and incidents and may be wary of associating with other sectors that have had their own challenges, such as social media.
- Smaller players may lack the resources to engage, or they may think that bigger companies should stay in the spotlight of attention from regulators and policymakers.
Building trust between different segments of the digital sector may not be easy, but it is imperative to keeping people safe online. As the Taskforce for a Trustworthy Future Web concluded: “As the community working to build a healthier digital world explores new models and ways of doing things, it should collaborate with and include the gaming community as a core part moving forward.”
The more knowledge that can be shared among digital services that face similar challenges, the better prospects for digital thriving.
Meeting the regulatory moment
Governments around the world have enacted or considered different approaches to online safety regulations. In some cases, like Australia’s recent law banning social media for children under 16, games with online interactive components are to be exempted from the law. But in other cases, such as the U.K. Online Safety Act and the E.U. Digital Services Act, gaming companies are in scope for far-reaching regulatory requirements.
For gaming companies, managing the complexity of conflicting legal requirements in dozens of countries around the world could create hefty compliance burdens that only the largest players may be in a position to manage. By joining together to define agreed industry terminology, best practices, and assessment approaches, gaming companies can help build a foundation of flexible efforts that can encourage coherent approaches to regulation.
Forging strong relationships outside of the industry
Collaboration should not be confined to industry-only conversations. When it comes to challenges like abuse and harassment, child safety, and violent extremism, there is no substitute for multi-stakeholder collaboration.
The World Economic Forum Global Coalition for Digital Safety brings together key players from governments, industry, international organizations, and civil society to jointly develop resources that will help game designers and trust and safety professionals implement Safety by Design. Examples include a typology of online harms, case studies of risk assessment (including one focused on child safety in metaverse gaming), and a report on measuring digital safety.
These publications are useful resources, but the process of putting them together through collaboration between industry, government, and civil society is an invaluable opportunity to help outside organizations understand how trust and safety works in different parts of the industry, including gaming.
Now what?
Explore the Safe Framework and align with state-of-the-art approaches to trust and safety.
To learn more about Safety by Design, check out the Trust & Safety Professional Association curriculum chapter.
Check out the resources developed by the World Economic Forum’s Global Coalition for Digital Safety.
References
- Badiei, F., Feerst, A., & Sullivan, D. (2023, Sept). Toward a common baseline understanding of trust and safety terminology. Journal of Online Trust & Safety.
- Digital Trust & Safety Partnership. (2024). Safe Framework Specification.
- Kowert, R. (2025, Jan). The video game industry is finally getting serious about player safety. Wired.
- Task Force for a Trustworthy Future Web. (2023). Scaling Trust on the Web.
- Trust & Safety Professional Association. (2024). T&S Curriculum: Safety By Design.
- World Economic Forum. (2023). Digital Safety Risk Assessment in Action: A Framework and Bank of Case Studies.
