Apex Legends, Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order, The Sims 4, and Command and Conquer: Remastered publisher Electronic Arts has announced some new measures it’s taking in order to crack down on toxicity in its games’ communities. The company’s published a Positive Player Charter with updated behaviour guidelines, and revealed it’s just stripped thousands of “player-generated assets” featuring “inappropriate and hurtful names and language” from its games.
EA’s posted the news on its website, announcing the Positive Play Charter follows feedback taken from a summit held last year “to better understand how we could work together to build healthy communities in our games”. At this time the company “made a commitment to promote positive behaviour in our games, and take clear steps against those fostering toxicity in our communities.”
In addition to some other steps its taken in the meantime, EA announces the new charter, which is “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.”
The company explains that players found to be acting in a way that’s “offensive or abusive” will be held responsible for their actions.
When we all take on toxicity, we can create positive experiences, interactions, communities. Learn more about our Positive Play Charter: https://t.co/vt1c29IcCM pic.twitter.com/sTOKAVGzxO
— Electronic Arts (@EA) June 17, 2020
Additionally, the post reveals, “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.” The company adds it will continue to do this “consistently”, too.
In the charter itself – which you can read here – EA says it’s “not here to drop the ban hammer, unless we absolutely need to”, but “will take action to protect our players against harmful behaviours”. You can find out more about what the company’s done, and doing, to combat toxicity in the blog post on its site here. “This isn’t a quick fix, but it is a long-term commitment that we intend to continue to act on,” the post says.