Nintendo, Sony, and Microsoft, the big three console manufacturers, have announced a shared safety guidelines to better ensure a safer gaming experience. This is not the first time that all three companies have collaborated for online. They already share numerous crossplay games, including Fortnite, Rocket League, and Apex Legends, making it so that any user can play a game with a friend on their platform of choosing, and several games include cross saves between other platforms.
In their shared statement, the three companies note that protecting players digitally can often be a tough challenge, and necessitates a far more unified approach. The new principles come as three main categories: Prevention, partnership, and responsibility.
Here's a brief summary of each of the principles,
- Prevention will support tools to customize their experience, add safety features, inform both parents and players through use of conduct, terms of use, and enforcement practices, and invest in technology to help track and stop improper content.
- Partnership will commit to working with a broad group of people and organizations, including law enforcement, industry members, industry trade organizations, experts, ESRB, and PEGI. Shared research and encouraging the use of report tools will also be involved
- Responsibility will make it easy to report violations to the code of conduct, respond to all lawful requests to law enforcement, properly notify law enforcement in situations deemed unlawful, and publish rules and requirements to make sure players understand them for continued engagement on these platforms.
