A Police Squad is Getting Paid to Play Games
A squadron of police officers has been assigned to an interesting task: playing videogames online. Getting paid to play games is a dream many have likely had, but chances are few imagined being a cop while doing it.
Unfortunately, there's a lot of negativity and even potential crime in online multiplayer games. The anonymity of the internet makes it easy for some to bully others, or worse, making the gaming experience anything but fun. Apparently, that's where this police group is trying to come in.
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Over in Denmark, a group of police officers have been given the responsibility of gaming online to seek out signs of abuse under the name Police Online Patrol. The cops play popular online games like Fortnite, Minecraft, and Call of Duty: Warzone, looking for signs of hate speech, fraud, and even child grooming. The effort began back in April 2022, and has continued since. The police even have customized avatars in some games to indicate that they're cops, and they regularly stream on Twitch and share clips of what's going on behind the scenes and some of their gaming victories on video streaming services like TikTok.
While this effort might strike some gamers as silly, the truth is that there are rampant problems surrounding online gaming and streaming. Toxicity in games has been studied and reported on many times, with players in some titles experiencing hate speech and harassment on a regular basis. This has extended into swatting on occasion, as well, which has had lethal outcomes in some cases. Unfortunately, there hasn't been a one-size-fits-all solution to these problems.
That's not to say that the industry isn't trying, though. Games are tightening up
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