Ofcom credits its supervision work with securing child safety changes on PlayStation and Xbox. Hours earlier the only page making that exact claim had it deleted, after this site proved neither platform was ever assessed.
Estimated reading time: 5 minutes
In short. A new Ofcom press release published today says that "since online safety rules came into force, Ofcom has secured changes on some of the UK's most popular gaming platforms, including Roblox, PlayStation and Xbox" [1]. This site tested the identical sentence on 3 October, on a different Ofcom page, and found that the 16-page report on Ofcom's supervision work names six platforms engaged, none of them consoles [6]. This morning this site also found that the original page carrying the sentence had quietly dropped it, with no changelog entry, as of 12 October [7]. Hours later, the same claim is back, on a new page. Two documented mistakes: four stars.
Ofcom's press office moves fast. "'Stranger Danger' tops parents' online gaming worries," published today under the Online Safety banner, leads with research findings about children's gaming habits: 64% of parents worry about their child talking to strangers through games, 55% of children who game online play with people they have never met offline, and so on, each figure referenced to Ofcom's new Growing Up Gaming summary report [1]. None of that is in dispute here.
Lower down, unreferenced, sits a different kind of sentence. "Since online safety rules came into force, Ofcom has secured changes on some of the UK's most popular gaming platforms, including Roblox, PlayStation and Xbox, helping to strengthen protections for younger users" [1]. That is not a statistic from a survey. It is a claim about what Ofcom's own regulatory work has achieved, naming three specific platforms.
A claim this site has already tested, twice, today
This exact sentence has a documented history on this site. On 3 October, a teardown of Ofcom's "Parents: Power Up!" gaming advice page tested the same wording, word for word, against the one document Ofcom itself published describing its supervision work: a 16-page report on "Project Mercury," which names the platforms Ofcom wrote to in March 2026 as "Facebook, Instagram, Roblox, Snapchat, TikTok and YouTube" (page 8) [3]. Fetched again directly for this piece, the report still runs to 16 pages and still names the same six services. PlayStation and Xbox appear in it zero times [6].
That same 3 October piece checked Ofcom's register of categorised services, the published list of online platforms meeting the thresholds for extra duties under the Online Safety Act. Checked again today, the register still lists Roblox under Category 1 and Xbox Network under Category 2B. PlayStation, PlayStation Network and Sony appear nowhere in it, in any of the three categories [4].
Then, this morning, a second piece found that the original "Parents: Power Up!" page, the one the 3 October teardown had tested, no longer carried the sentence at all. Fetched again for this piece, the page still has no mention of Roblox, PlayStation, Xbox, "secured" or "supervision" anywhere in its text; its only date marker reads "Published: 7 September 2026 Last updated: 12 October 2026," with nothing explaining what changed [2] [7]. The specific, unsupported claim about PlayStation and Xbox had been quietly dropped from the only page that made it.
The claim is back, on a page published the same day
Today's press release does not just repeat the sentence Ofcom removed. It links to the two pages that should, in theory, back it up, and neither does. One link points to the Growing Up Gaming research landing page, which describes children's gaming habits and devices and contains no mention of Roblox, PlayStation, Xbox or any supervision outcome [5]. The other points back to the "Parents: Power Up!" page itself, the page that no longer makes this claim [2].
Whatever edited the earlier page on or before 12 October did not reach whoever wrote today's press release, or the edit was never meant as a correction in the first place. Either way, a reader who saw the sentence deleted from one Ofcom page this week will find it published afresh on another, timed to the October half-term, with Ofcom's own gaming lead quoted alongside it urging parents to "Check, Chat, Change" [1].
The claims, tested
| Ofcom's words, published today | What the record shows | Verdict |
|---|---|---|
| "Ofcom has secured changes on some of the UK's most popular gaming platforms, including Roblox, PlayStation and Xbox" [1] | The Mercury supervision report names six platforms engaged by Ofcom; PlayStation and Xbox appear in neither the six named services nor anywhere else in its 16 pages [3] | Roblox checks out; PlayStation and Xbox do not appear in the document describing what was secured |
| The same sentence credits PlayStation specifically with safety changes secured by supervision | PlayStation does not appear anywhere on Ofcom's own register of categorised services, checked fresh today across all three categories [4] | A platform absent from Ofcom's own oversight record, credited with a supervision outcome |
| The press release's own outbound links support the claim | Neither linked page, the edited gaming advice page nor the Growing Up Gaming landing page, mentions PlayStation, Xbox or any supervision outcome [2] [5] | The claim is unsupported by its own citations, not just by outside evidence |
Credit where due
The research behind today's press release is not in question. The parental-concern statistics are referenced to a named summary report, the half-term "Check, Chat, Change" advice is sound and specific, and Ofcom's quoted gaming lead is careful to say that "no set of rules can eliminate every risk online" [1]. The fault sits in one unreferenced sentence recycled from a page that had already had it removed, not in the research the release is built to promote.
Verdict
Four stars, from two documented mistakes: PlayStation credited with a supervision outcome it does not appear in, and the claim republished on a new page the same day a different Ofcom page had it quietly deleted, with no sign the two edits were connected. A regulator that tells gaming companies to "Check, Chat, Change" before publishing has not, on this evidence, checked its own press release against its own website.
Sources
- Ofcom, "'Stranger Danger' tops parents' online gaming worries" (13 October 2026): ofcom.org.uk
- Ofcom, "Parents: Power Up! How you can help your child stay safe while gaming online" (published 7 September 2026, last updated 12 October 2026): ofcom.org.uk
- Ofcom, "Update: tech firms' responses to our call for action to protect children" (Project Mercury, 21 May 2026): ofcom.org.uk PDF
- Ofcom, "Register of categorised services and list of emerging Category 1 services" (published 30 June 2026): ofcom.org.uk
- Ofcom, "Growing Up Gaming" research insights landing page (13 October 2026): ofcom.org.uk
- This site, "Ofcom's own gaming advice page says it secured child safety changes on PlayStation through its supervision work. Ofcom's own register of regulated platforms, last updated 28 September 2026, does not list PlayStation at all." (3 October 2026)
- This site, "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." (13 October 2026)