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    Brianna Wu

    Person » credited in 1 games

    Brianna Wu is the founder of Giant Spacekat, and a frequent industry speaker on women in games.

    Yet Another Developer Leaves Their Home Following Harassment

    This topic is locked from further discussion.

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    patrickklepek

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    Edited By patrickklepek
    No Caption Provided

    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.

    Good.

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    deactivated-5cbd3a5285f1e

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    This shit is fucking disgusting. What is wrong with people.

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    djkommunist

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    and apparently this gamergate shitshow "isnt" about harassment

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    Travis_J

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    This is utterly sickening.

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    beforet

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    #4  Edited By beforet

    Ethics!

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    Jumbs

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    Goddamn, the community of self-identified "Gamers" is utterly toxic. No wonder I generally don't admit to people what one of my favourite past-times is.

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    splodge

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    Good article Patrick. A tad too late tho, Brianna already called out GB on MSNBC for doing nothing :(

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    Little_Socrates

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    Thank you, Patrick. And Jeff for letting Patrick publish this article, as well as CBSi.

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    paulmako

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    This can't become a routine story. It just can't. Fuck.

    I just can't fathom how someone could say these things to another person.

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    cookiemonster

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    What the hell is wrong with people?

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    Levius

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    This is a story that had to be addressed here, shame it couldn't have been posted earlier.

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    Humanity

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    This shit is fucking disgusting. What is wrong with people.

    The same thing that has been wrong with people for ages except they didn't have a viable platform to communicate through. 15 years ago this same individual would still exist except social media wouldn't be as bloated as it is now so she simply would have no idea he even existed and he would have no way to let her know.

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    Chummy8

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    Thank god the comments here aren't defending this shit.

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    fuzzypumpkin

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    I'm so disappointed with people sometimes...do your thing Brianna.

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    WillieMcBride

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    I'm glad that you posted this in a news story on the site, Patrick. It's important that it's condemned by the site as a whole and not just you and Alec in the Bombing the AM podcasts.

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    pause422

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    These people should be able to be tracked and have the worst possible things happen to them.

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    iamcarneiro

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    @splodge: It's been weeks and weeks of bullshit, GB kinda deserved the call out :/
    Really glad to see Patrick address it

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    Pepipopa

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    Why don't some hackers use their powers for good, and find out who these people that are making death threats are, publish their names, addresses, where their children go to school, etc. Let's see how they like it. Turnabout is fair play.

    Sounds like a great idea until some hacker with a personal vendetta against somebody makes fake evidence and posts it as fact and somebody gets destroyed.

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    Ford_Dent

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    Thanks so much for posting about this, Patrick. This shit is terrible, but it needs to be talked about.

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    Gyrfal

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    C'mon GB community, I'm really hoping these comments keep together against what GG has been doing. I only have so much faith.

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    Milkman

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    #22  Edited By Milkman

    I'm sure a mountain of shit is about to be heaped on you via Twitter right now, Patrick but thanks for writing this, anyway.

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    MadBootsy

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    #23  Edited By MadBootsy

    Ugh. Absolutely disgusting. It's so sad to see how far harassment on the internet can go, like Robin William's daughter getting tweeted pictures of her dead dad. MESSED UP.

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    patrickklepek

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    @splodge said:

    Good article Patrick. A tad too late tho, Brianna already called out GB on MSNBC for doing nothing :(

    We can always do better. Always. That's life.

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    hiimmikecruz

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    @tekzero said:

    Thank god the comments here aren't defending this shit.

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    fargofallout

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    I truly don't understand why people get so bent out of shape about people like Anita Sarkeesian speaking about what she perceives as issues in gaming. What is so threatening about saying "hey, there might be some sexism in these games?" You have every right in the world to disagree with that line of thinking, but to become so angry and to resort to shit like this is just weird.

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    MeAuntieNora

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    I wish there were some way to punish and shun these assholes.

    Absolutely nauseating.

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    abendlaender

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    If I had an IPhone I would buy her game right now. Buck. This. Shit.

    Gamings all grown up you guys. It's Art.

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    conmulligan

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    Thanks for covering this, Patrick.

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    weilide

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    Thanks for writing this.

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    Dan_CiTi

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    Oooof, stuff like this darkens your day for sure.

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    AlmostSwedish

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    Good! I've seen multiple people claiming that Wu made it all up in order to get sympathy (of course, these claims are completely insande and fall apart under scrutiny), so I'm glad GB decided to take a stance!

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    flakmunkey

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    #33  Edited By flakmunkey

    @sephirm87: While my gut reaction is to agree with you, I don't think that doxxing is the best route. These actions are deplorable regardless of the reason you do them. We should not stoop to their level, instead we need to rise above it, however hard that may be.

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    cmblasko

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    Thanks for posting this, Patrick. I know that a lot of people don't want to hear about this stuff but it is simply not going away so the least that can be done is to continue to shed a light on it.

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    splodge

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    @splodge said:

    Good article Patrick. A tad too late tho, Brianna already called out GB on MSNBC for doing nothing :(

    We can always do better. Always. That's life.

    I agree, I guess it just bugs me a little that you get zero recognition for the amount that you have covered the topic, not to mention you have gone through a somewhat similar situation and even hosted and been involved in panels about how to stop this kind of thing from continuing. Jeff is the main man at GB, but he is not the whole website.

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    Honkalot

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    #36  Edited By Honkalot

    Can't Twitter hand the IP addresses over to the police or something? They're very serious threats so I feel like they should be required by law to do so.

    I mean fucking 4chan handed over IP addresses regarding a bomb threat to the Swedish police so they could catch the guy who said it. That guy was behind some kind of IP blocker as well - so obviously these dirtbags CAN be found and dealt with!!

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    AMyggen

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    Yeah, stuff like this fucking sucks. Ugh.

    Relevant to this is that Twitter really needs to get their shit together when it comes to making it easy for people to report harassment. Right now that process is laughable.

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    tsjb

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    Yeah this is disgusting, and yeah we should be finding ways to put an end to this (no idea how we would go about that though), but when you pin this on GamerGate and pretend it's a problem that only affects women you turn this disgusting travesty into a way to forward your agenda, and you should be ashamed.

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    brandino

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    and apparently this gamergate shitshow "isnt" about harassment

    It isn't, you can't blame the entire cause or entire group because of 3 piece of shit individuals. If you do then you must group GiantBomb in it because there were people doing some vile shit here when this whole quinn thing started.

    I think it's disgusting that these women are being ran out of their homes but don't try to say it's because of gamergate or that everyone involved is some woman hating piece of shit.

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    ZironZ

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    #43  Edited By ZironZ

    I've seen articles about this on multiple sites and if anything they are just going to make the situation worse by drawing attention to it. She shouldn't have announced she left her home. If anything that only encourages this kind of harassment more by showing it works.

    The best course of action would have been to have publicly ignored the threats and quietly contacted the police. If she did really feel the harasser was going to follow through with the threats then it is a good idea for her to leave her home and live with a friend for a few days, but don't publicize that fact.

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    wait

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    These pieces of shits need to know this type of behavior will not be tolerated. I believe a year in federal prison will do just fine.

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    SlashDance

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    Shut down twitter already...

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    bakonon

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    @splodge said:

    @patrickklepek said:

    @splodge said:

    Good article Patrick. A tad too late tho, Brianna already called out GB on MSNBC for doing nothing :(

    We can always do better. Always. That's life.

    I agree, I guess it just bugs me a little that you get zero recognition for the amount that you have covered the topic, not to mention you have gone through a somewhat similar situation and even hosted and been involved in panels about how to stop this kind of thing from continuing. Jeff is the main man at GB, but he is not the whole website.

    I don't think anyone who's under attack like this can be blamed for missing a few salient facts while going into hiding. I'm sure she'll get her facts straight eventually.

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    bassguy

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    @tsjb said:

    Yeah this is disgusting, and yeah we should be finding ways to put an end to this (no idea how we would go about that though), but when you pin this on GamerGate and pretend it's a problem that only affects women you turn this disgusting travesty into a way to forward your agenda, and you should be ashamed.

    Yo, it's directly related to gamergate. Patrick shouldn't be ashamed of shit. We've all seen the Zoe Quinn IRC logs. Gamergate is an organized harassment of women in game dev. Fuck gamergate, and the horse it rode in on.

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    ejc93

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    #48  Edited By ejc93

    @splodge said:

    @patrickklepek said:

    @splodge said:

    Good article Patrick. A tad too late tho, Brianna already called out GB on MSNBC for doing nothing :(

    We can always do better. Always. That's life.

    I agree, I guess it just bugs me a little that you get zero recognition for the amount that you have covered the topic, not to mention you have gone through a somewhat similar situation and even hosted and been involved in panels about how to stop this kind of thing from continuing. Jeff is the main man at GB, but he is not the whole website.

    GB West/the Bombcast are probably always going to be looked at as the most important source for an "official GB stance" (or whatever you want to call it) on an issue. Alex and Patrick nail it pretty consistently on Bombin when it comes to social-related issues like this, but I don't think that's enough to excuse GB from some of the criticism it's gotten. They're important, really respected voices in the industry, I don't think being a little more vocal would hurt.

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    bangy

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    Thank you Patrick, please do more of this because it's important.

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    rorie

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    I'm going to go ahead and post the community rules here in case anyone has any question as to what's appropriate in this space.

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