‘The Cost of Bullying’ is an idea in which direct plays an important role.

To prevent in-game bullying, we hacked Magic Quest (the biggest game of the year and China’s equivalent to ‘World of Warcraft’) and made bullies pay for their actions, quite literally.

The more gamers bullied, the more they paid.

All in real-time.

All within the game.

By building a direct-response mechanism into the game itself, ‘The Cost of Bullying’ is a direct-driven campaign that celebrates targeted and response-driven creativity.

In China, online gaming has exploded.

But so has bullying.

1-in-2 gamers have at some point been bullied when playing online.

As an industry leader, Samsung wanted to tackle this toxic behaviour head on.

THE COST OF BULLYING. When gamers bully, they pay the price.

There’s a real cost to bullying.

Which made us think: When gamers bully, shouldn’t THEY pay the price?

Working with one of the country’s biggest game developers, we hacked ‘Magic Quest’—the biggest game of the year and China’s equivalent to ‘World of Warcraft’.

A key part of the game are in-game purchases—for weapons, armour and power-ups.

So we made bullies pay for their actions, quite literally.

We linked the game’s ‘abusive language detection system’ to the pricing database.

Every time the system detected any sign of bullying, it raised the price.

So the more gamers bullied, the more they paid.

All in real-time.

All within the game.

The hacked game gave bullies a real wake-up call.

During the two-week hijack, over one million bullies paid the price.

With reports of in-game bullying falling by 40%.

Making this China’s most successful anti-bullying drive to date.

The message was loud and clear…

There’s a cost to bullying.

And now when gamers bully, they pay the price.