A first-of-its kind leaderboard evaluating how major video game companies address antisemitism and extremism in online games was released on Wednesday by the Anti-Defamation League, Jewish Insider has learned.   

The leaderboard assessed 10 of the most popular games and their respective companies on their policies and in-game safety features. “Fortnite” was rated the best at implementing safeguards to combat antisemitism, with “Grand Theft Auto Online,” “Call of Duty” and “Minecraft” following closely behind. Other major games evaluated included “Roblox,” “Valorant,” “Clash Royale,” “Counter-Strike 2” and “PUBG: Battlegrounds.” 

ADL evaluated the product features of each individual game and the relevant policies that govern that game — for some games, the policies that govern them were specific to the game, while for some it was the company policies that apply to all of their games.

The leaderboard, created by the ADL Center for Technology and Society in partnership with the ADL Ratings and Assessment Institute, builds on the annual survey work that CTS did in partnership with gaming analytics firm NewZoo, from 2019-2023.

Games received labels of advanced, moderate or limited protections based on criteria including: antisemitism and hate policy; extremism/terrorism policy; in-game display of code of conduct; documentation of escalation to law enforcement; and in-game tooling. 

The latter criteria, which accounts for 60% of a game’s overall score, includes players’ ability to block and/or mute other players; players’ ability to report players for voice, text, usernames and user-generated content; and the game’s prevention of antisemitic and hateful extremist usernames.

Bonus points were awarded for clear appeals processes and engagement with ADL, and points were deducted for harmful content on public-facing game stores. The antisemitism watchdog shared detailed findings with each gaming company and invited them to discuss the assessment before the leaderboard’s release, to which Epic Games, Supercell and Minecraft responded.    

Popular online games boast hundreds of thousands of players, with 85% of U.S. teens reporting playing video games in 2024, according to the Pew Research Center. The Pew study found that  80% of all teens think harassment over video games is a problem for people their age, and 41% of those who play them say they’ve been called an offensive name while playing.

The leaderboard comes one year after ADL conducted a study where it asked 15 participants (university students, recent graduates and young adults) to play four leading online games (“Valorant,” “Counterstrike 2,” “Overwatch 2” and “Fortnite”) in one-hour increments with different identities (Jewish and Muslim religious and ethnic identities, as well as in national identities such as Chinese, Mexican and Israeli). It found that almost half of game play experiences included some form of harassment, such as slurs, trash-talking or disrupted play, and one-third included identity-based harassment, such as “gas the Jews” or calling people the “N-word.”  

The ADL said it plans to feature the results in an online Gaming Leaderboard, designed to be a resource that will track how gaming companies manage their online multiplayer ecosystems over time to guide parents, gamers, policymakers and the gaming industry itself.

“When a parent wants to know if an online game is safe for their child, there has been no one-stop shop to understand how a particular game approaches online safety,” Daniel Kelley, senior director of the ADL Center for Technology and Society, said in a statement. “This leaderboard addresses that critical gap by offering the most comprehensive evaluation of safety measures in online multiplayer games to date, with a focus on how companies manage antisemitism and extremism.”