ADL (the Anti-Defamation League) on Thursday released its Online Gaming Leaderboard, the first comprehensive public evaluation of how leading video game companies address antisemitism, hate and extremism in their online multiplayer games.
The leaderboard assesses 10 of the most popular gaming titles on their policies and in-game safety features, providing a critical resource for parents, gamers, policymakers and the gaming industry itself. The top performers were Grand Theft Auto Online, Call of Duty, Minecraft, and Fortnite with Fortnite being the top performer overall.
The leaderboard evaluates major games including GTA Online, Madden NFL, Minecraft, Roblox, Valorant, Fortnite, Clash Royale, Counter-Strike 2, Call of Duty and PUBG: Battlegrounds. Games received labels indicating advanced, moderate or limited protections based on comprehensive criteria spanning policies to prevent antisemitism and hate (40 percent of score) and in-game tooling to prevent antisemitism and hate (60 percent of score).
Online games are among the most popular forms of entertainment in the world, with hundreds of millions of players connecting daily.
"Without strong safeguards, these platforms can become breeding grounds for harassment and hateful activity that harms players directly, normalizes hateful ideologies and damages trust," said Jonathan Greenblatt, ADL CEO. "This leaderboard provides the transparency that parents, gamers and the industry need to understand where companies are succeeding and where urgent improvements are necessary."
Currently, no publicly available, comprehensive resource evaluates the safety measures within popular online multiplayer games. While the Entertainment Software Rating Board (ESRB) provides age and content guidance, it does not assess what gaming companies are doing to keep players safe from hate and harassment in online game environments.
"When a parent wants to know if an online game is safe for their child, there has been no one-stop shop to understand how a particular game approaches online safety," said Daniel Kelley, Senior Director of the ADL Center for Technology and Society. "This leaderboard addresses that critical gap by offering the most comprehensive evaluation of safety measures in online multiplayer games to date, with a focus on how companies manage antisemitism and extremism."
The ADL Center for Technology and Society, in partnership with gaming analytics firm NewZoo, conducted the only annual, nationally representative survey of hate, harassment and extremism in US online gaming from 2019 to 2023, providing the foundation for this evaluation.
Games were evaluated on eight core criteria across two categories: policies and in-game tooling.
Policies (40 percent of overall score):
· Antisemitism and hate policy (30%)
· Extremism/terrorism policy (30%)
· In-game display of code of conduct (20%)
· Documentation of escalation to law enforcement (20%)
In-Game Tooling (60 percent of overall score):
· Ability to block other players
· Ability to mute other players
· Ability to report players for voice, text, usernames and user-generated content
· Whether various games enforced against attempts to create antisemitic usernames
Prevention of antisemitic and hateful extremist usernames
ADL assigned higher weight to in-game tooling because these features can directly limit antisemitic harm to players and curb hateful and extremist content. Bonus points were awarded for clear appeals processes, engagement with ADL on trust and safety issues and parental controls. Points were deducted for harmful content on public-facing game stores.
Company Engagement
Before releasing the scorecard, ADL privately shared detailed findings with each gaming company and invited them to discuss the assessment. Some companies engaged with ADL to clarify issues or make improvements to their policies and tooling, while others did not respond. Some went as far as sharing internal policy guidance about how their online game explicitly prohibited antisemitism to further increase the accuracy of the leaderboard.
Best Practices for the Industry
Alongside the leaderboard, ADL released a best practices guide offering actionable strategies for gaming companies to strengthen player safety, including:
· Develop strong, clear policies
· Develop robust player tools
· Develop fair and transparent processes
· Monitor and moderate official, public-facing spaces
· Engage with subject matter experts
The ADL Online Gaming Leaderboard is designed to be an ongoing resource that will track how gaming companies manage their online multiplayer ecosystems over time.