Load the Game

Developers sign a letter to end harassment

• Crisan Mircea
• September 2nd, 2014

Hundreds of game developers, both tied to important publishers and independent ones have signed an open letter to the gaming community. The letter is intended to end hateful speech and harassment. It states that everyone, regardless of gender, sexual orientation, ethnicity or religion has the right to play, criticize or make games without being harassed or threatened. Furthermore, the letter encourages people to report any threats of violence or harm they might see in comments on platforms such as Steam, YouTube, Twitch, Twitter, Facebook or reddit.

The said letter was created following ongoing online harassment in the community, particularly certain events that happened over the last few weeks. Zoe Quinn, developer of Depression Quest, was constantly harassed in a hate campaign. Phil Fish, the developer of Fez found his personal information leaked online following the hacking of his website. As a result, Fish, who had previously announced the cancellation of Fez 2, decided to sell the IP to someone else. Another controversial person, Anita Sarkeesian, the creator of a web series based on the representation of women in pop culture, was forced to leave her home after receiving death threats. Sarkeesian is a known feminist, who makes use of her videos to point out how women are used in games and movies. Her views are often way too radical and she makes a fuss out of nothing, drawing questionable conclusions from things like mistreating women in videogames. This is why she gets a lot of hate comments, mostly coming from male viewers.

So far, over 1200 individuals have signed the letter. If you are tired of all the hatred and online harassment you can contribute and add your name to the letter. To do that, you need to send a tweet to Andreas Zecher (@andreaszecher) with your name and surname and either your Company/University name or a Independent mention.