EA Unveils Positive Play Charter to Tackle Toxicity in Gaming

EA isn’t anyone’s favorite game company, of course, what with rampant abuse of their employees, their systematic gutting of most of the studios they acquire, and of course their abusive monetization schemes, but every turd has its diamonds, and EA’s particular “gem” is the fact it’s really good at social issues. In the past, it’s been one of the first studios to stand up for LGBT representation in games, it’s one of the few companies to donate money to the Black Lives Matter movement, not just put up that black square, and now they’re trying to tackle toxicity in gaming as a whole.

Their plan is called the “Positive Play” charter, and it’s a new set of behavioral rules and guidelines that EA expects everyone who engages with them – be it in-game or on the forums – to follow. The guidelines are really straightforward stuff: we’ve got “Treat others the way you want to be treated”, “Don’t be a jerk”, “Be open minded”, “Don’t cheat”, “Share clean content”, “Don’t break the law”, and more. It’s pretty much the barest minimum you need to meet to be considered a functional member of society, but by writing it all down, EA reps have something they can point to if players, say, complain about getting a ban because they won’t stop swearing.

In fact, the bottom chunk of the charter talks about exactly that: how breaching the “positive play” charter can result in temporary or even permanent bans of your EA accounts.

Will this change anything? Probably not. But it isn’t meaningless, either, at least if EA follows through with it and starts handing out bans and linking to the charter, which I can expect they might do. We’ve learned in the past few weeks that silence that enables toxicity is almost as bad as toxicity itself, so even the act of saying you’re against such practices… well… it’s something.

I’ll take something.