Mark Serrels, provided by
10:41 am PDT, Wednesday June 24, 2020
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#twitchblackout is trying to push Twitch into stricter action.
#twitchblackout is trying to push Twitch into stricter action.
Photo: Martin Bureau / Getty Images
#twitchblackout is trying to push Twitch into stricter action.
#twitchblackout is trying to push Twitch into stricter action.
Photo: Martin Bureau / Getty Images
This article, as sexual abuse allegations flood, the gaming world faces reckoning, originally appeared on CNET.com
In recent days, the gaming industry has been struggling with a deluge of new sexual abuse allegations on social media. Focused on Twitch
Serpentine, but including game developers and game journalists, the accusations are so widespread that many believe they are the result of systemic problems with the culture.
“For every story told, many more are not told,” says Giselle Rosman, founder and director of Melbourne Global Game Jam, and a veteran game developer. “We all have to hold each other accountable and actively work to report abusive behavior and create work environments where everyone is safe and can thrive.”
The protest has not happened in a vacuum. This spate of allegations follows the Black Lives Matters protests and has obvious similarities to the #MeToo movement that hit Hollywood in late 2017. In games, this is far from an isolated incident. In the words of one developer CNET spoke to, “the gaming industry is in its third ‘MeToo’ move.” Marginalized groups have lived through years of targeted harassment campaigns, as part of broad online movements such as Gamergate. In many ways, these new allegations are part of that difficult and traumatic story.
Video games have long struggled to deal with deep-seated problems of misogyny, homophobia, and transphobia, but some feel the gaming industry is poised for real and meaningful change. Now people are in the process of asking themselves, how and where do we start?
Formative years
Jessica Richey, a 28-year-old Twitch content creator and streamer, has been creating a formidable document: a mid-sized post, now also a spreadsheet, that compiles the numerous abuse accounts shared on social media in recent years. days. There are currently more than 200 reports.
Richey started checking them out after seeing multiple abuse allegations focused on SayNoToRage, a content creator known for live streaming the video game. Destination
. Since then, SayNoToRage has addressed the allegations on its YouTube page.
Richey started with this Twitter thread. Almost immediately others started texting him Twitter
with an overwhelming volume of accounts and accusations.
