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Showing Original Post only (View all)Another Woman In Gaming Flees Home Following Death Threats [View all]
Game developer Brianna Wu fled her home last night, following what is becoming a distressingly frequent case of women in the gaming scene expressing fears for their safety due to online harassment.
Wu, a developer in Boston who recently released the well-received Revolution 60 mobile game, said on Twitter last night that she and her husband had called the police and left their home to stay elsewhere after receiving a spate of vile Tweets that included death threats and the couple's home address.
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Wu's account of her harassment was widely retweeted last night and viewed, by many, as a distressing new incident to add to the progression of people in gaming, mainly women, who've born the brunt of intense harassment largely due to their views on games and the gaming scene. Wu joins Zoe Quinn, the indie developer who was the original target for what was then not yet called Gamergate in late August and who said she had to leave her home due to threats. There is also Anita Sarkeesian, the critic behind a video series about the depiction of women in gaming, who chronicled in late August the most recent threats that had her leaving home and notifying police out of fear for her safety.
To those reading this who feel that coverage of harassment and threats is a dismissal of concerns about how the games media or gaming industry works, know that it's not. We've addressed and investigated such topics before and will do so again. But Friday's incident brings a different aspect of the Gamergate controversy to the fore: the targeting of women, the sense that discussion about gaming, games media ethics, and gamers will be forever contaminated by an ugliness disproportionate to the issues at hand. This is a potential new status quo that we at Kotaku reject. The kind of harassment that sends anyone in the gaming scene fleeing from their homes is detestable and should be condemned no matter where one stands on anything else.
http://kotaku.com/another-woman-in-gaming-flees-home-following-death-thre-1645280338