The Positive Play Charter

Last year we held a Building Healthy Communities Summit where we invited 200 of our Game Changers from over 20 countries and represented the diversity of our player audience - it included parents, teachers, and players representing several of our specific game communities, to better understand how we could work together to build healthy communities in our games. It’s here that we made a commitment to promote positive behavior in our games, and take clear steps against those fostering toxicity in our communities.

Since then, we have created new ways for players to report abuse, improved our internal escalation policy to deal with harmful behavior in our games, and created new training programs for our own internal teams that are working directly with our communities. We know our players want more, and we want to do more to make our communities positive places to play, so we also built a player council to help us shape the decisions we are making.

At Electronic Arts, we believe in the power of positive play. So today, we are proud to introduce the Positive Play Charter - an updated set of community guidelines with clear consequences for players who engage in racist, sexist, homophobic, and abusive acts in our games and channels. If we see someone being offensive or abusive, we’re going to hold them responsible for their actions. 

We believe that our communities should be safe, fun, inclusive environments free of threats, harassment and other toxic or unlawful behavior. In an effort to do better and to enforce our Positive Play Charter, we are applying additional resources and tools to our moderation and abuse reporting programs. We have a disciplinary policy that is in place, and is being applied consistently across all our games and services. In recent weeks, we have removed more than 3,500 player-generated assets from our games - inappropriate and hurtful names and language -- and took action with the players that had posted the content. We will continue to consistently do this.

The last few weeks have been a stark reminder that we have a responsibility to stay vigilant in this effort. We won’t tolerate racism, sexism, homophobia, harassment or any form of abuse. We can build better, healthier communities inside - and outside - our games, and that’s what we are here to do. Last week we included important anti-racism messaging in many of our games, reaching millions of players.  Every step towards a healthier community is a positive one.

This isn’t a quick fix, but it is a long-term commitment that we intend to continue to act on. We will constantly question and evaluate how we’re doing – and what more we can do. Meaningful change in our industry means a step towards meaningful change in the world we all share.  We all have a role to play. Let’s make it positive. 

For more information on the Positive Play Charter, visit http://www.ea.com/commitments/positive-play/charter.