There’s a hot trend among a vocal minority of gamers right now: the harassment of women developers and critics. Of course, this sort of thing is not new in tech – or, let’s face it, across the internet – but in the video games industry it has hit a fashionable peak.
On Thursday, it was widely reported that the North American media critic Anita Sarkeesian had fled her own home, thanks to rape and death threats from angry gamers targeting her and her family. Her crime was to produce a series of YouTube videos analysing the depiction of women in games from a feminist perspective.
Sarkeesian’s plight eerily mirrors that of games designer Zoë Quinn, developer of the experimental adventure, Depression Quest, who has also had to pack up and move in with friends, after an online campaign of hatred against her.
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