Our Ongoing Commitment to Positive Play and Welcoming, Safe Communities

At Electronic Arts, we strive to create experiences where all players feel welcome, safe and included. As we continue to build games and experiences that entertain massive online communities and harness the power of community in and around our games, we are committed to ensuring that the environments we create for our players model positive play.

Today, in the spirit of that commitment, we are publishing our first-ever Transparency Report, which shares more about how we ensure a safe player experience and the actions we take on accounts that have violated our Rules of Conduct and Positive Play Charter. 

We are also updating the Rules of Conduct in our User Agreement and our Positive Play Charter to provide players with an even clearer understanding of what behavior is acceptable (and what is not) in our games and services and what they can expect from us when those rules are broken. These rules form the foundation for ensuring a welcoming, safe environment for our community.

How we combat disruptive behavior

Our safe play efforts start with proactive moderation, including filtering tools to scan and block illegal, offensive or inappropriate content in real-time. We believe that all players should have a safe environment in which they feel comfortable playing the game and expressing themselves, and we consider the context and age rating of the game or service. There are some topics we won’t ever allow, including hateful conduct, bullying that goes beyond trash talk or gameplay banter, and sexual content.

Text and image filters are available in nearly all EA experiences that enable players to create usernames and item descriptions, text chat with other players, or upload images. If players choose an inappropriate name or item description, we’ll ask them to try again. If a player’s text chat is inappropriate, we replace that text with hashmarks - #### - so that it doesn’t disrupt other players. If players try to upload an image that violates our rules, we’ll tell them to try another.

Player tools to help ensure Positive Play

Player reporting lets us investigate any inappropriate content and behavior that is not blocked by proactive moderation and allows us to respond to disruptive behavior quickly. Every Electronic Arts game in which players can interact launches with an option to report disruptive or inappropriate behavior in-game.

We use a combination of technology and human moderation to review player reports. More than half of content violations were for minor disruptive behaviors and received a warning, which our research and analytics show is effective in stopping the majority of disruptive behavior. If a warning doesn’t deter the behavior, other appropriate action is taken, including suspensions or full bans.

Promoting Fair Play

EA is also committed to fair play, and we invest in tools and technologies that protect against cheating behavior when it disrupts our players from enjoying a fair gaming experience. Our policies prohibit activity that engages or assists in cheating, collusion, unfair play, or using exploits. This includes spamming, hacking, phishing, generating or distributing malware, or otherwise damaging or disrupting the systems of EA, our partners, or our players. This prohibition also includes account or in-game currency buying, selling, distributing or farming.

Ensuring positive experiences for younger players

We want to ensure that our players feel welcome and safe, from the most experienced, seasoned gamers to our newest, younger players. We strive to empower young players and their parents to make informed gameplay choices and work closely with third-party partners and platform holders to accomplish this. This means that parents and guardians can set controls on their device, which will be followed in our games. For example, if they turn off communication with other players in the platform parental controls, that will also turn off communications with other players in the EA game. Many of our games will selectively turn off a specific feature based on the parental controls set. For example, if parents or guardians turn off multiplayer through parental controls, their child won’t be able to access that feature in-game. Other games may switch off all online features completely. For additional peace of mind, the EA App on PC and Mac enables parents and guardians to set playtime guidelines for weekdays and weekends and sign up to receive weekly Family Activity Reports that detail their family’s play habits.

All of these tools and technologies work in tandem to better serve our communities. We strongly believe in the power of positive play and we will continue to scale, refine and enhance our efforts to create the best, most positive experience for our communities.

For more information about EA’s 2024 Transparency Report, visit here.

To view EA’s Rules of Conduct, visit here.

Get familiar with our Positive Play Charter here.

Check out other amazing EA stories on ea.com/news.