Survey finds high levels of harassment in multiplayer games, as well as white supremacist recruiting attempts

The ADL surveyed 1,045 US adult gamers (oversampling Jewish, Muslim, African American and Hispanic/Latinx individuals) and asked them about their experiences in multiplayer games: on the one hand, they found that playing these social games brought many benefits: friendship, support, fun, connection and romance; on the other hand, they found that a very high proportion of gamers experienced harassment of varying kinds, that many players had quit games because of harassment, and that some games where home to much more harassment than others.

The most "positive" games (where players said they were unlikely to experience harassment) were World of Warcraft (59%), Minecraft (55%), NBA 2k (51%), Overwatch (49%), Counter-Strike: Global Offensive (48%), and Fortnite (47%); while the worse offenders for harassment were Ancients 2 (DOTA 2) (79% of players of the game), Counter-Strike: Global Offensive (75%), Overwatch (75%), PlayerUnknown Battlegrounds (75%) and League of Legends (75%).

That one set of figures is itself a little arresting: the most positive games are actually pretty negative (about half of players experience harassment), while in the world of negative games, the players reporting harassment represent large supermajorities of all sampled players.

Harassment often targets players based on race, gender and gender identity. Racial harassment varies based on race: if you're Black, it's 31%; Latinx, 24%; and if you're Asian, it's 23%. Jews and Muslims are harassed for their background 19% of the time. The highest levels of targeted harassment are experienced by women (38%) and queer players (35%).

This should probably matter to games companies: about one in five players have quit a game to escape harassment. Read the rest