A group of seven lawmakers is sending a letter to the world’s largest video game companies tomorrow asking each of them what steps they are taking to combat “harassment and extremism” in online video games.
As axios reportsThe seven Democratic representatives — including Lori Trahan (Massachusetts), Katie Porter (California) and Senator Ron Wyden of Oregon — all co-signed a letter aimed at “better understanding the processes you have for handling player reports from Encounters with harassment and extremism in your online games and ask that you consider safety measures related to harassment and anti-extremism”.
Not surprisingly, the list includes companies like Activision Blizzard (call of Duty, over watch), Microsoft (Xbox), Sony (PlayStation), Roblox, Take-Two Interactive (Grand Theft Auto, NBA 2K), Riot Games (League of Legends, Appreciation), epic (Fourteen days) and electronic arts (battlefield, FIFA & Driving me crazy).
These are all huge international companies, most of them with thousands of employees spread across the globe, responsible for some of the world’s most popular and enduring online games. Wanting to grill them when so many of them are based in the US – or at least are most popular in the US – is a pretty obvious move!
Strangely, however, whoever compiled the list of which companies to target was clearly just going through a list of “Most Popular Games” and not “Biggest Companies” because those industry titans include Innersloth, the developers of Between us
Between us may be a huge success, but Innersloth is also a tiny team. How tiny? This tiny:
Innsersloth’s website states that the studio currently has 20 employees. I don’t know how much they can explain when their game lets you play as a cute little astronaut, has no voice chat and lets players communicate only through a menu of ready-made lines.
But then no one has to legally reply to the letter, it’s just a letter, so maybe they can just reply, “Sorry, I think this is for Xbox!” and get on with their day.
