A Christchurch Call to Act Against Misogyny in Games

Misogyny in online communities, including games, is increasingly a pathway to violent extremism, and the games industry should engage with the Christchurch Call's efforts to address it. The argument comes from a newsletter written after the Call's first action forum, held at Oxford's Blavatnik School of Government in September 2026. The Call was founded after the 2019 Christchurch attack by Jacinda Ardern and Emmanuel Macron and now includes 55 governments, the European Commission, 20 technology partners and many civil society groups. Its work is shifting from livestream takedowns, which have improved markedly, toward the cultural factors that shape online communities.

Ardern cited data showing that gender-based violence appears in at least 40% of extremist manifestos, and that boys who support violence against women are up to three times more likely to support violent extremism. A Harvard-linked dataset found 41 planned misogynistic mass attacks across nine countries since 1989, 32 of them between 2018 and 2025. All perpetrators were male, with a median age of about 23, and only 11 cases were treated as terrorism or hate crimes. Separate figures presented at a games workshop counted 84 attacks with gamified or game-adjacent elements between August 2018 and August 2026, killing 202 and injuring 440, with a median perpetrator age of 17.5. Games themselves were not said to cause violence.

In a workshop on the promise and peril of games, the author led a design group that proposed an open-source AI "referee" moderation tool to flag "awful but lawful" misogyny, warn offenders early and reward inclusive behaviour through in-game currency. Participants acknowledged risks including cost, player backlash and consent. Other ideas included co-designed onboarding standards and a cross-platform hub for identifying coordinating hate actors.

The author criticises the industry's absence: only Roblox and Discord are Call members, and neither attended. He also argues that weak legal definitions of misogyny reflect a polarised political climate, and urges companies to control what they can. The issue also includes brief news items on Reform UK's mobile game, the EU's KIDS Act, the Rockstar tribunal and Roblox's cross-platform scheme.