Article Details

Game over: Europol storms gaming platforms in extremist content sweep. Law enforcement agency’s referral blitz hit gaming platforms hard, surfacing thousands of extremist URLs. Europol's Internet Referral Unit (EU IRU) says a November 13 operation across gaming and "gaming-adjacent" services led its partners to report thousands of URLs hosting terrorist and hate-fueled material, including 5,408 links to jihadist content, 1,070 pushing violent right-wing extremist or terrorist propaganda, and 105 tied to racist or xenophobic groups. The sweeps formed part of a coordinated "Referral Action Day" involving multiple partner countries and marked the IRU's most explicit foray into the world of gaming platforms, which it now says are increasingly being misused for radicalization, recruitment, and the distribution of extremist narratives. A report from the EU's Radicalisation Awareness Network backs this up, warning that extremists are already making "strategic and organic use" of gaming and gaming-adjacent spaces – everything from in-game chat and voice comms to livestreams and modding communities – and even employing grooming tactics inside those channels to court young players. "For example, perpetrators re-enact terrorist attacks, school shootings, or execution scenes in 3D gameplay, edit the video with chants or suggestive emojis, and disseminate it on various commonly used social media platforms for even wider reach," Europol said. "Other gaming-related platforms intended for streaming gameplay are misused to recruit minors into various violent extremist and terrorist groups or to livestream real attacks and even suicides" The IRU, housed inside Europol's European Counter Terrorism Centre, was created in 2015 after EU ministers ordered a dedicated unit to identify and report publicly available terrorist content online. Since then, its remit has expanded to cover not only jihadist material but also violent right-wing extremism and migrant-smuggling-related content.  According to Europol's latest transparency report, the IRU reviews content across more than a hundred platforms a year and assessed more than 16,000 individual items in 2023 alone. While the unit cannot directly order takedowns, its referrals often trigger removal under platform terms of service or lead national authorities to issue binding orders under the European Union Terrorist Content Online rule that requires removal within one hour [PDF]. The shift to targeting gaming platforms shows how fast extremist groups have adapted their distribution channels. For platform operators, this is likely to mean more referrals, more pressure to respond quickly and more collaboration with law enforcement.  For parents and young gamers, it's yet another reminder that the days of treating gaming as a sealed-off entertainment bubble are long gone.