September 7, 2025
This investigation reveals that girls and women of various ages have been bullied and harassed by other gamers while playing online. The gaming companies have, at the same time, failed to take sufficient measures to protect female gamers.
Virtual meeting rooms on the internet bring together players of different nationalities and ages, but for some of the regular users of these spaces, online gaming is merely a means to trap female players into online violence and blackmail.
It all started on February 16, 2024, when I read a story posted on the Facebook page of Qawem, an organization that deals with issues of sexual blackmail in Egypt. It was about a girl who was almost 14 years old playing Ludo online. When one of the other players found out her age, he invited her to have a sexual video call with him, threatening to expose her if she did not comply.
I started wondering what girls were being subjected to in online gaming rooms and what safety measures global gaming companies are implementing to protect female players. So I decided to try it out myself.
From March to June of 2024, I got into video games, after looking at the statistics and reading what Egyptian women players were saying about five different online games with players across the world. I will be honest that what I was about to do terrified me.
On June 2, I played the online dice game Ludo, and Top Top, on and off for seven and a half hours, from seven in the evening to 2:30 the next morning. During that time, I experienced verbal harassment, and persistent demands to have sexual conversations on the phone, and to send pornographic images to social media accounts.
The Ludo dice game has four rounds. I chose the classic one. At the bottom of the screen it said: “Abuse and harassment will result in you being banned from the chat.” A seemingly reassuring message, implying that the game is monitored in some way by the administrators. But what actually happened was puzzling.
I rolled the dice alongside two players from abroad. During the game, a player with an Egyptian flag under his name suddenly asked me, “What color are they?” I was confused and told him I didn't understand what he meant. He then asked me how old I was, and said, “Don’t you understand?” saying he meant my underwear. At that point, I stopped responding.
Later on, “Mohammed,” another player from Egypt, joined the chat. We didn't know each other, but he asked for my phone number. When I refused, saying I was already in a relationship, he asked again three times, saying: “What's the problem with us getting to know each other?” I asked him why he kept asking, and he came out with it directly: “I want you to be on my lap.” That night, I curled up tensely to try to get to sleep.
Dr. Ali Al-Nabawi, professor of psychiatry and neurology at Al-Azhar University, believes that “online harassment can produce mental trauma, especially if the person is exposed to obscene images, videos, or language.” And he says some women who go through this may suffer depression or sexual trauma, affecting their marital relationships.
Hala Douma, a lawyer at the Court of Appeal and the State Council, defines harassment as “acts, signals, or gestures of a sexual nature given without the consent of the other party.” She says that online harassment can take various forms, including sending images and videos, and using both explicit and suggestive words and expressions.
She adds that online harassment is “recognized as a crime of harassment using modern technology, and also comes under a third type of criminal act: setting up or managing an online account for the purpose of committing a crime.”
My online game came to an end, but the man was still trying to get my phone number. I wondered if the chat would automatically end if the player used indecent language, and if the administrators of the game would take action against him, like banning him.
The round between me and “Mohammed” came to an end, but then another Egyptian player called “Mahmoud” began trying to get to know me. I gave him false information about myself. Then he asked me detailed questions about my body and sent me his Instagram account. I looked it up and found it was a fake account.
Each round in the game lasts normally between two to four minutes, but with these delays it took up to 12 minutes. As it went on, I tried to find a quick way to report the abuse, but to no avail.
Then, after the round ended, I looked to see if I could contact the developers of Ludo through the game portal, but I had no luck with that either.
I emailed the company twice; once as a player who had been verbally harassed with a fake email, and the other as a journalist with ARIJ, asking for them to respond to my investigation. But up to the date of publication, we have received no reply.
On May 29, 2022, 28 year old Malak (not her real name) was defamed at the home of one of her relatives and her partner in the game, while taking part in the combat game Evony. “An Egyptian player told my relative that I wasn't quite right... I imagine he’d told him I’d sent him photos of me,” she says.
A Moroccan woman suffered abuse on the Evony group chat from the same Egyptian player, according to Malak, who says she was harassed three times in the game's group chat room by Arab and American players: “The first one joined the group chat and then started following me on Facebook and Instagram.”
Online games have certain conditions for joining, like registering by email or Facebook. Malak chose to log in with Facebook to maintain her ranking as a player. These games have group rooms where players can form combat alliances and develop strategies to fight virtual battles against others.
Digital safety expert Ahmed Hijab says women are at greatest risk of sexual violence in participatory online games: “Girls face many types of nuisance behaviour, including harassment and stalking (...) If a female player registers with her personal information using her real email address, it’s easy to follow her Facebook or Instagram account.”
To make the social experience more real, video games have evolved from text-based group chat to audio. But male players have exploited this feature negatively. Lawyer Hala Douma, a gamer herself, explains: “On PUBG, we would turn on our microphones. But even if they were muted, you could hear it… They would focus on the fact that there was a girl player, and then the harassment would start. I heard someone making sexual noises, suggestive comments and moaning.”
Hala’s first experience of global online games was when she was 18 or 19 when she played a popular billiards game. But even then, she couldn’t avoid harassment. “If the game is linked to your personal profile, you get stalked.hey make pornographic comments when you post your picture;you get unwelcome compliments, or overtly sexual comments in the chat,” she says.
Dr. Al-Nabawi links this harassment to sexual repression. He says that societies that suffer from sexual repression and have no culture of sex make this repression secret. This contrasts with societies that treat sex as a normal biological function, while having laws that prohibit sex with children or without the consent of the other party.
A study published in the Arab Journal of Media and Communication Research (AJMCR) in January 2022, found that 68.3 percent of the sample reported experiencing verbal harassment during gaming.
This study, which included 400 people aged between 18 and 35 in the governorates of Cairo and Giza, also found that the most popular online games were combat games, particularly PUBG and the GTA range of action and adventure games. Adventure games were the least popular in the study sample.
Mohammed Al-Harthi, an expert in information security and digital media, notes that complaints have been made against some online gaming accounts, where the blackmailer lures his victim through conversations during the game to obtain their personal information, and to access their accounts on various platforms.
On June 2, 2024, I finished my round of Top Top, a range of games including cards (kotchina) and dice with voice chat rooms. I entered a chat room with a group of Arab players. They welcomed me and then one of them wrote to me on the private chat saying he was Omani and asking my name and how old I was. He then asked me to describe my body in detail: “Are you thin or curvy, tall or short, fair or dark-skinned?” When I asked him why he was asking, he said he was just “curious.” I told him that the game had warned me that this conversation was inappropriate, so he suggested we unfriend each other.
Sure enough, a message appeared on the app saying the conversation was inappropriate and giving me the option to either block the player or continue the conversation. I blocked him. But before that, I logged into his account to see if they had sent him a warning or a red flag on the account, as some communication apps do, but I found nothing.
According to Malak, the company no longer cares about combating harassment of those using the free version of the game: “It’s hard to get a hold of the support team, because the game cares about complaints from people who pay to play... the VIP customers.”
Al-Harthi says, “Global games have policies in place for reporting and dealing directly with user accounts, but they are implemented in a limited way, only in ten percent of reported cases.”
Malak says that relations with her family went downhill. “My relative spoke to me in a bad way.. he shouted at me and insulted me on a group chat.” This is consistent with the conclusions of the AJMCR study, which found that online games have an impact on social interaction and behaviour.
It took me a month to recover from the mental impact of what happened to me. And Dr. Ali Al-Nabawi, professor of psychiatry and neurology at Al-Azhar University, points out that the trauma of harassment can produce a whole range of symptoms in teenage girls, including poor academic performance, withdrawal from the family, and increased feelings of guilt. “The victim always blames herself for her part in the harassment,” says Dr. Al-Nabawi, stressing that they need to seek psychological help if they have any of these symptoms.
On June 13, 2024, I sent an email from my Ludo account to Moonfrog, the developer of the game, telling them I had been verbally harassed by other players, but had received no help from the Ludo support team. The company responded two days later, promising to investigate the reported abuse and take firm action against the players. I also sent several emails, in my capacity as a journalist, to the companies mentioned in this report. But, as of the date of publication of this report, I have received no response.
The safety and anti-bullying policy for PUBG and other games states that “harassment comes under the laws of each country.” PUBG's safety policy stipulates players be banned for a mere 30 days, if they are shown to have indulged in “behaviour that constitutes sexual harassment, such as using obscene words or sexual descriptions.”
Lawyer Hala Douma says, “It’s hard to deal with these cases globally, because each one comes under local laws... Harassment in online gaming is subject to Egyptian law.” She adds that Egypt’s internet investigators do not accept screenshots or video recordings of games, so it is normally hard to provide evidence.
Al-Harthi is clear that the goal of the companies that own these games is for everyone to play. So while reporting mechanisms do exist, they are difficult for the average user to find or access.
He advocates installing an emergency button to combat harassment and for support against abuse, as well as placing a warning sign on the abuser's account.
Al-Harthi explains that global companies are quite capable of setting standards to prevent bullying and verbal abuse, especially audio abuse, by banning accounts and using AI tools to identify patterns of harassment, in adherence to the gaming charter. But companies are reluctant to put money into such measures.
This report was published in Arabic by: Raseef 22 | Alyaoum 24 | Mada News | Muwatin
