Game developers say they are taking action against racism in games

Several game developers say they are taking steps against discrimination and racism in their games and companies. For example, Infinity Ward wants to do more to tackle the phenomenon in the Call of Duty games and Niantic donates the money that is raised with a Pokémon Go event.

The developers are doing this in response to the death of black American George Floyd, whose death has been the cause of worldwide protests for two weeks. Including developer Infinity Ward says on Twitter to want to act harder against racist statements in his games. “We are already handing out thousands of bans every day to players with racist or hateful names, but we need to do more,” the company wrote. The developer therefore wants to free up more resources to identify racist content in the game, set better filters for racist usernames, hand out more permabans and make it easier to report insults.

Infinity Ward also uses the Call of Duty games itself to draw more attention to racism. In Modern Warfare and Warzone, a message containing Black Lives Matter will appear. Other developers also keep such promotions. This is how Rockstar got the online modes of Grand Theft Auto V and Red Dead Redemption two hours offline as protest. Developer 2K Games did the same with NBA 2K, Dragon City and Monster Legend. Private Division did that with The Outer Worlds and Kerbal Space Program.

Dozens of developers and studios now also say that they donate money to charities. So give Square Enix and Ubisoft $250,000 and $100,000 to charities, respectively. Pokémon Go creator Niantic is donating a minimum of 5 million in proceeds from the Pokémon Go Fest 2020 virtual event. Humble Bundle proposes a one million dollar purse available to attract more black developers.