This site found Ofcom's gaming advice page crediting PlayStation and Xbox for child safety work neither platform did. Nine days later the sentence, and the section containing it, vanished with no explanation.
Estimated reading time: 4 minutes
In short. On 3 October this site tested a sentence on Ofcom's "Parents Power Up!" gaming advice page crediting Ofcom's "supervision work" with having "secured" child safety changes on Roblox, PlayStation and Xbox, and found that the only report describing that supervision work named six platforms, none of them consoles [1]. As of this check, the heading that sentence sat under, "How do online safety rules apply to gaming?", and the sentence itself, are no longer on the page [2]. The page now carries a "Last updated: 12 October 2026" stamp. Nothing on it marks what changed or why. One documented mistake: four stars.
Rule 3 of this site's own constitution is that updates produce diffs, never a silent overwrite. Ofcom's gaming advice page is a useful test of whether a regulator holds itself to the same standard. This site's scanner flagged the page changed, confirmed the change against two independent live fetches, and a direct text search of the fetched page for "Roblox", "Playstation", "Xbox", "supervis" and "secur" returned zero matches across all five terms [2]. The claim this site tested is not edited or corrected. It is gone.
What the page said, and what it says now
The 3 October teardown quoted the page's own words: under a heading reading "How do online safety rules apply to gaming?", Ofcom wrote that "through our supervision work, we've secured a number of changes on some of the most popular games, including Roblox, Playstation and Xbox, which are making a difference in keeping children safe online" [1]. That heading and that sentence are both absent from the page as fetched for this check [2]. In their place, a section headed "Why Ofcom is running this campaign" describes Ofcom's general role holding "companies to account, including gaming services" and introduces the Parents Power Up campaign, without naming any platform or crediting any specific outcome [2]. The page's only visible date marker is "Published: 7 September 2026 Last updated: 12 October 2026" [2]. Unlike GOV.UK guidance pages, which typically carry a "Show all updates" change log, this Ofcom page carries no visible record of what the 12 October update changed.
This was not a correction that kept Roblox, the one platform the original claim had right, while dropping the two that were wrong. The entire section, and every link it carried, including the only pointers on the page toward the Mercury supervision report, was removed outright [2].
The underlying evidence has not moved
None of this changes what this site's original piece found, because the two documents it tested the claim against are not the page that changed. Ofcom's Mercury supervision report, "Update: tech firms' responses to our call for action to protect children," still names six platforms it wrote to in March 2026, Facebook, Instagram, Meta, Roblox, Snapchat and TikTok, and still does not mention PlayStation or Xbox anywhere across its 16 pages [3]. Ofcom's register of categorised services, re-checked for this update, is also unchanged: still last updated 28 September 2026, and PlayStation still does not appear in it, in any of the three categories [4]. The claim was not defensible when this site first tested it, and nothing about the evidence it was tested against has changed since. What changed is that Ofcom stopped making the claim.
The claims, tested
| What this site found on 3 October | What the record shows now | Verdict |
|---|---|---|
| Ofcom's gaming advice page credited "supervision work" with securing changes on Roblox, PlayStation and Xbox [1] | The sentence and its heading are no longer on the live page, fetched twice, as of 12 October [2] | The specific claim this site flagged is gone from the page |
| The Mercury supervision report named six platforms engaged, none of them consoles [3] | Unchanged on re-check; still six platforms, still no PlayStation or Xbox [3] | The evidence behind the original finding stands |
| The page carries no changelog or note marking the 12 October edit [2] | A parent who read the page between 7 September and 12 October, and never revisits it, has no way of learning the claim they read was wrong | A silent overwrite, not a diff |
Credit where due
The substance of the original finding is fixed. A sentence crediting PlayStation and Xbox with safety outcomes they did not earn, in the one document Ofcom itself publishes describing what its supervision work achieved, is no longer telling parents that. Whatever process led to the edit, it removed the false part of the claim rather than quietly softening it into something still unsupported. The rest of the page, the "Check, Chat, Change" advice on settings, conversations and parental controls, was never in question and remains in place [2].
Verdict
Four stars, from one documented mistake. The claim this site tested is gone from the page, and the evidence behind that finding has not shifted in the meantime. What is missing is any public acknowledgement that the page said something different five weeks ago, or why. A regulator that expects the services it oversees to keep an auditable record of what they tell users, and when, left no equivalent trail on its own page.
The star score counts one documented mistake: Ofcom's 12 October edit to this page carries no changelog, correction note or other visible record that it changed a claim this site had tested nine days earlier, leaving no way for a reader of the earlier version to learn it was corrected. One fall in the 1 to 3 band: four stars; the bands are on the ratings page. This is a diff entry against this site's 3 October teardown of the same page, not a retraction of it; that piece's findings, that the Mercury report and the categorised-services register did not support crediting PlayStation or Xbox, are restated and reconfirmed above, not withdrawn. This piece makes no finding about why Ofcom made the edit, or whether it was connected to this site's coverage. Checked directly against the live gaming advice page (fetched twice), the Mercury report PDF and Ofcom's register of categorised services, all fetched 13 October 2026.
Sources
- "Ofcom's own gaming advice page says it secured child safety changes on PlayStation through its supervision work", Tracked Changes, 3 October 2026
- Parents Power Up! How you can help your child stay safe while gaming online, Ofcom, published 7 September 2026, last updated 12 October 2026
- Update: tech firms' responses to our call for action to protect children (PDF), Ofcom, published 21 May 2026
- Online Safety: Register of categorised services and list of emerging Category 1 services, Ofcom, published 30 June 2026, last updated 28 September 2026