As discussed on today's Bombin' the A.M. show from earlier today, the head of development at Giant Spacekat, Brianna Wu, was forced to leave her home on Saturday afternoon, following a lengthy and detailed series of death threats on Twitter that included the disclosure of her home address.
The police were contacted soon after the tweets were made.
Giant Spacekat recently shipped Revolution 60 on iOS, a sci-fi adventure focused on four women.
This is, unfortunately, not a new development in the past few weeks. Both Depression Quest designer Zoe Quinn and media critic Anita Sarkeesian experienced online attacks that followed depressingly similar patterns with equivalent results.
Step one, a person is targeted. Step two, that individual's personal information is unearthed. Step three, said information is used to harass and intimidate. It's utterly heartbreaking, and while it might represent fringe elements of the Internet, and becoming more common. It's scaring people, making games unsafe.
A sampling of the tweets sent Wu's way from a now-suspended account are below, but be warned, what's shared is deeply uncomfortable. Please be aware of that before reading what follows.
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All three cases have come in the wake of GamerGate, a rhetorically loud hashtag ostensibly about problems in games journalism, but one that has been mired in incidents of extreme harassment. What happened to Wu is not new, and represents a cycle that's been reliably playing out multiple times. GamerGate's origins can be found in the mass disclosure of information related to Quinn's sex life alongside accusations of journalistic impropriety, accusations that were ultimately found without merit.
Wu isn't allowing the harassment to stop her from speaking out, fortunately.
Announcement: I AM NOT GOING ANYWHERE. I am going to keep making games. And I will keep speaking up for women in gamedev.
— Brianna Wu (@Spacekatgal) October 11, 2014
Good.