Safeguarding in Esports and Video Gaming – Publisher and Federation Responses (Part 2)
Friday, 03 July 2026
Author: Dr. Tsubasa Shinohara
[1]Part 1 (see here[2]) of this series outlined a working definition of safeguarding in esports and identified three interconnected categories of harm: sexual abuse and harassment, cyberbullying, and physical and mental health problems. It also detailed the range of stakeholders within the ecosystem.
Part 2 of this series examines the practical responses of two of those stakeholders — video game publishers and esports federations — and considers whether their self-regulatory initiatives are sufficient to address those harms. Part 3 (to be published shortly) examines the safeguarding initiatives of online platform providers Twitch and YouTube, before setting out overarching recommendations on how the esports ecosystem might develop a more unified approach to safeguarding across all stakeholder groups.
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Written by
Dr. Tsubasa Shinohara
Dr Tsubasa Shinohara is an Assistant Professor at the University of Tsukuba (Institute of Humanities and Social Sciences). He obtained a PhD in Law and a Master of Law at the University of Lausanne (Switzerland) and a Master of Law and Bachelor of Law at Meiji University (Japan). His main research interests include international human rights law (i.e., European Convention on Human Rights), especially “sports/esports and human rights”, sports/esports law, and technology and law.
