Stardock CEO, League of Legends Devs, Others Support #GamerGate

The problem is that the gaming media gets more hits from demonizing game makers which makes their audience angry and causes them to lash out at the appointed villain. So contextless articles are written designed to make you hate someone, usually people that the article writer already has a problem with. Those articles then live on via search engines perpetuating people being mad and going after the appointed villain. Toxicity is created, spread and maintained.

“...the bulk of the “anti-#GamerGate” crowd, are perfectly comfortable with harassment and abuse as long as it’s the right people doing the harassment and abuse: Themselves.”

“The nail in the coffin for me was when I had a friend in the industry say 'Hey, you should talk to Ben Kuchera [from Polygon], because he's open-minded and he'll listen to you.' I was like 'Are you f—king kidding me?' and they were like 'No, you should really talk to him.'“So I e-mailed him and he e-mailed me back. And it was cool, and he was like 'We should talk' and I was like 'Holy s—t. This is actually happening'. But what happened is, the day I really started committing to GamerGate – and one of the people I think really needs to be exposed and is just a really awful person at times is Leigh Alexander [from GamaSutra], so I just started re-tweeting her old tweets where she was just being a sh—thead – within an hour of Ben trying to setup a date for me [to get interviewed] at Polygon, he went from 'Yeah, yeah, let's setup a date' to 'I'm going to have to decline this interview'.”

“Me and a large part of my work colleagues support #gamergate. We work to create an amazing experience for our customers, for the gamers, and in return we are branded as misogynists, fat, neck-bearded creeps by these so-called 'journalists'. Yes, almost all of us here in this studio are gamers. We, on a personal level do NOT approve of these websites (which, at the end of the day, make money on our work) and their biased articles and lacking ethics.“Note that this is not my company's official stance on this matter. Some developers from the industry have already made public remarks regarding this (hats off to you guys), but our company hasn't issued an official stance, and will most likely not do so any time soon.”

“Game dev here (Ubisoft). A lot of my fellow dev friends love what you are doing.“We all know that PR in the gaming industry is a joke.“Most of us are silently lurking these threads and discussing what is happening internally. Sorry for not being that useful.”“Sadly a lot of us doesn't want to dig this mess too much as we are afraid to be f—ked for having an opinion about the industry we love and we work in.”

“I know you don't really need to hear this but please don't harass anyone” … “Having said that, I really appreciate that this whole thing exists and applaud the level headed and respectful ones among you. The thing I'm afraid of is that without a movement like this, another game like Fallout 2 might never see the light of day. For a game like that to get made everyone in the room has to be able to discuss what the experience of enslaving people and buying a prostitute for your mutant friend will be. I have a hard time imagining that conversation comfortably taking place today and that's really sad. You can't really “win” in this fight, but making your voice heard and reminding people you exist, you aren't malicious, and that you are a gamer is great.”

“Today we are on a crossroad. Direction A means w, [sic] as indie developers commit ourselves to censorship and Direction B means we keep our “artistic freedom.” I was expecting the very same people from the movie to push events in Direction B’s favor but now one of them agrees that gamers are dead, one of them whines and acts like a toddler and others keep radio silence.“So yes, I feel sorry for indie scene. Today the indie scene is betrayed and raided by clueless people.”

“On the historical experience note – the history of the last two centuries in my country is a history of oppression and censorship. The brightest minds of our society were executed and alienated by authorities. The only acceptable topics in art were topics mandated by censors. In the result a once rich culture drained and became anti-art. I know how dangerous censorship is. Censors killed culture with several centuries worth of experience and now imagine what they can do to a culture as young as video games.”

“Assassin’s Creed had 5 different articles about its lack of a female character on the front page of an industry website in one day. Five! Next to each other. And we can continue: the Far Cry 4 cover “scandal,” Stanley Parable was accused of racism, Wildstar was accused of sexism, God of War, Hotline Miami, Bioshock, Divinity Original Sin, Witcher… Nobody ever dares to argue or protect his art, because it would mean instant accusation of misogyny/racism/homophobia/sexism… And then you realize that the people who are accusing others everyday have terrible conflicts of interests and very weird ethics. The pot calling the kettle black.”“And they will never be happy. If you don’t have a gay character in your game, you are homophobic, if you do have gay character in your game, you are homophobic, because they don’t like the character. If women in your game look good, you are sexist, if they look bad, you are sexist, if you can fight with them, you are misogynistic, if you can’t fight with them, you are using them as objects, if you don’t have any women, because there is no correct way how to have them, you are misogynistic.”

“When you look at the moral standards of some of those people. When you see them calling respected people with different opinions “Faded crackheads, s–tlords and misogynistic basement neckbeards”. When you see that one of the biggest gaming sites (Polygon) has a blacklist of people they don’t like to hear from, what would you expect? Many people also don’t go deep into the issue and they make an opinion just based on the hysteric reaction to anonymous threats, while the whole thing is about something absolutely different.”