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Publishers including Blizzard, Riot and CCP to combat gamer toxicity with Fair Play Alliance organisation

Publishers including Blizzard, Riot and CCP to combat gamer toxicity with Fair Play Alliance organisation

Companies from across the PC, console and mobile space have come together to create a new organisation to tackle toxicity within video games.

The body's mission statement says that it wants to look into best practices to "encourage fir play and healthy communities in online gaming".

Announced during GDC, the body is formed by games companies such as Blizzard, CCP, Corillian, Discord, Epic, Flaregames, Huuuge Games, Intel, Kabam, Kefir, Ker-Chunk Games, Mixer, Owlchemy Labs, Playrix, Radial Games, Riot Games, Roblox Corp, Rovio, Space Ape Games, Spirit AI, Supercell, Two Hat, Twitch, Unity and Xbox. There are 30 firms signed up with now, with more surely to join their ranks.

Tackling gamer toxicity is arguably one of the biggest topics in the market right now. Blizzard's Jeff Kaplan has been incredibly open about how difficult dealing with the Overwatch community has been, with a now-fired Riot Games employee echoing this sentiment concerning League of Legends.

Other titles, such as Rainbow Six: Siege, have seen measures added in-game to help manage negative elements of the community.

"The Fair Play Alliance is a coalition of gaming professionals and companies committed to developing quality games," the organisation said on its website.

"We provide an open forum for the games industry to collaborate on research and best practices that 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."

The body is already having an impact on the market, with Epic ditching friendly-fire from Fortnite to discourage toxic gamers


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PCGamesInsider Contributing Editor

Alex Calvin is a freelance journalist who writes about the business of games. He started out at UK trade paper MCV in 2013 and left as deputy editor over three years later. In June 2017, he joined Steel Media as the editor for new site PCGamesInsider.biz. In October 2019 he left this full-time position at the company but still contributes to the site on a daily basis. He has also written for GamesIndustry.biz, VGC, Games London, The Observer/Guardian and Esquire UK.