This essay is the introduction to a series of papers exploring how the games industry approaches trust and safety — the emergent professional subfield specializing in the governance of online spaces. While more commonly associated with social media platforms, trust and safety can take important lessons from how online playgrounds approach questions of governance. As importantly, it can ground these lessons in evidence, not panic.

Video games are a mainstream cultural force, but they remain largely absent from mainstream debates about digital rights and online safety. Our paper examines how Trust & Safety governance in online gaming compares to social media, tracing shared challenges around content moderation, pro-social design, and cross-platform harms. Drawing on expert reflections from a September 2025 symposium co-hosted by the NYU Stern Center for Business and Human Rights, the Center for Democracy & Technology, and American University’s Center for Security, Innovation, and New Technology, the paper offers a framework for understanding how the governance of online games can inform digital policy more broadly.

In a given month, more than 100 million people open Pokémon Go—the app that allows users to superimpose the world’s most profitable media franchise onto reality using only their smartphone.