I think gamers as a whole, though specifically those in niche communities, need to take a long and hard look at themselves. We should celebrate the volunteers that create wonderful content for us, generally with no financial gain. Instead, commonly, there are communities that criticize and tear down every little thing they can think of. They even went as far as to doxx the poor woman. We need to be better, and we need to hold these kind of toxic trolls accountable. Especially those of us who are men, we have a responsibility to call out other men who mistreat women in the gaming industry, or gaming in general.

*Edit: I apologize if I insinuated that all gamers are guilty of this kind of behavior, that was not my intention at all. My sentiment is that many of us do not think about this kind of thing, and less are willing to speak out against their friends. We need to be better about that as a whole. I appreciate you as a person if you are already of this mindset.

Lad
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Good for her for making the right decision for her own wellbeing. Too many sad little fucks on the Internet who spend all their time harassing others. Pathetic existence.

The only interaction I’ve ever had with authors of mods and such was sending them thanks for their hard work. Sad.

@[email protected]
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This isn’t even about gaming, necessarily.

Girls who code are rare. There are probably more AFAB coders at my work than those who identify as female. And a hell of a lot more men.

And I’m in a progressive city in a progressive state.

I work in IT, and I think there is one woman out of 50 employees on my corner of the org chart, and that’s the CIO’s admin assistant.

I’m certain it’s culture, and it doesn’t just go for programming, it goes for almost all of STEM. There was a recent “Stuff You Should Know” episode about toy chemistry sets, and they made it a point to talk about the marketing, and how it always was with boys, for boys. My son, 8 year old kid, says “that’s just wrong! Girls can do all that stuff!”. He’s got it figured out.

JackbyDev
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There are probably more AFAB coders at my work than those who identify as female.

Did you get this backwards?

@[email protected]
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No…but I am being hyperbolic. I definitely interface with more transmasc and nonbinary coders than I do with cisgender female coders. This may also be because, again, cultural reasons.

There certainly are more cisgender female coders, but they are still a minority group by a big amount, and they tend to not draw much attention to themselves.

JackbyDev
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I was asking because the usual stereotype is than many younger programmers are transfemme.

Which does not reflect my experience in the working world at all.

JackbyDev
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That’s fair, I was just making sure I read you right. 💜

@[email protected]
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As a welder, I’ve had a female coworker ONCE in 15 years working in the industry. My current work doesn’t even have a bathroom for women in the same building as most of the workers. Ig we did hire a female welder, she’d have to walk across the parking lot to the administration building to actually use a women’s bathroom.

“gamers as a whole”

leave me out of this i didnt do anything.

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The sentiment is that we all have a responsibility to hold our community accountable for this type of behavior.

You can disagree, it is likely a matter of philosophy. I feel a responsibility to try to put more positive influence to the world, and to call out harmful actions. Not everyone does, that is fine too, albeit a little sad.

Flamekebab
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“Our community” feels a bit monolithic. It’s like saying “film watchers” or “readers”. Lumping anyone that plays video games regularly into a single social group feels unhelpfully reductive.

go $fsck yourself
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The problem is as prevalent and pervasive as the gaming community as a whole, which is most definitely monolithic.

@[email protected]
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we all have a responsibility to hold our community accountable for this type of behavior.

Much like the “teach men not to rape” sentiment, the ones that will listen weren’t the problem in the first place. If the people that need to be called out were reasonable, they wouldn’t need to be called out, they don’t see what they’re doing as wrong. So we’re just screaming into the void.

@[email protected]
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So, I’m not trying to be severe here, but your argument implies you would watch someone be raped without intervening. Your argument falls apart for me with that context. Someone has to yell into the void, it’s something more than letting the problem fester unabated.

The ones who will listen need to learn to speak. Otherwise, why are listeners paying attention at all?

@[email protected]
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My argument doesn’t imply that at all. My argument is that you can’t reason with the unreasonable. You absolutely should say or do something about these people in the moment, but its extremely rare for them to realize they were in the wrong.

Telling someone on a forum that the way they’re treating a creator is wrong is not at all comparable to catching someone during a rape, and implying that because I think trying to reason with an internet troll is useless means I’d just let a rape happen is disingenuous.

@[email protected]
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i don’t disagree, call out the [HYPERLINK BLOCKED] for being [ALONE ON A LATE NIGHT], but please word it better.

there is that better?

@[email protected]
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“word your comments better”

– the guy using slurs

@[email protected]
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Not even being sarcastic; I am completely open to suggestions and constructive criticism.

That’s a pretty harmful word though, my guy, kind of antiquated. There are better insults, like “cock-brained” or “silly stupid little groundfuckers”, to name a few suggestions.

I’ve been a great fan of gaming for my entire long life. But I don’t play online games any more, because so many gamers are toxic. Obviously there are good individuals and some good outposts, but taken as a whole it is a toxic community.

@[email protected]
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i didnt do anything.

Exactly. Hence why the assholes get away with driving good people out. Maybe if people stood up and told the trolls to STFU and instead defended these people they wouldn’t be forced out of the community.

@[email protected]
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Blame me for something someone else did why dont you.

blame me for not forming a lynch mob why dont you.

blame me for not knowing this ws even happening.

people wonder why other people check out from communities and just go “oh” when they hear this shit is happening.

again.

leave me out of this ,i didnt do anything.

@[email protected]
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I’m not a gamer. I play games, but I’m not a Gamerᵀᴹ. I noped out of the “community” a long time ago.

I’m a little curious where she’s getting the harassment from. If it’s from twitter, I don’t know what to tell her. It’s designed to amplify hate and anxiety. If it’s from lan parties or irl shit, yeah, I haven’t experienced it, but I have seen that to a degree.

edit: Wait. Is the “harassment” coming from needy fans asking her to tweak her work for their liking? That’s a little different from what I assumed this was about. I’m not going to side with the community nagging her for tweaks, but if she’s creating this for herself, she needs to disengage from those types. If she’s creating these mods, putting them out online and expecting only positive comments, I don’t know what to tell her. This is something all big modders and have to deal with.

The article glosses over the sexual harassment until the end. She says that pictures of her were distributed on discord and mentions the daily harassment and sexualization from the community.

Yeah and someone else in this threat brought up that there’s another side to the discord drama. Frankly, this case is too messy to untangle. I can’t tell if she’s being completely honest or if all this could have been prevented of she set better boundaries. Regardless, I don’t think it speaks to the greater issues in “gaming culture”.

@[email protected]
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Thousands of hours, months of hard work. For about 300 bucks and a bunch of incels doxxing and harassing her.

I cannot fathom why she left.

People are asses sometimes, but whenever these conversations come up, I wonder: What do you even want from us? How are random people on the internet supposed to hold random anonymous trolls on the internet “accountable?” You can call them asses, but so? What if they don’t care? They’re anonymous. You could get mods to ban them, but if it’s a free service they can always make another anonymous account. It’s even more confusing in the context of something like an online game as opposed to a forum. What are you supposed to do about someone being an ass when you’ve probably never seen them before and probably won’t see them again?

@[email protected]
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I mean, call them asses. Maybe they don’t care, maybe they do, but we keep the problem relevant by being vocal against this kind of thing. To not do anything at all is to encourage trolls.

The prevailing wisdom for dealing with trolls in the past has been report, block, and move on. You never know if someone is going to thrive on that kind of conflict and a whole lot of motherfuckers love it.

I’m not saying it’s right or wrong because honestly I don’t know. I’m just sad they’re running off people contributing to their community and mad that they’re sexually harassing people.

The phrase is “don’t feed the trolls”, not the contrary.

Some people probably know them in real life. Like, you might have a friend who’s like “Yeah this [slur] wouldn’t update her mod so i posted [hateful thing] on her insta”. You could talk to them. People listen to their in-group more than randoms online.

But then again, the worst sort of people probably mostly have the worst sort of friends, and reinforce their bad behavior.

People are not assholes just because they’re anonymous. They’re assholes because they’re sociopaths. The Internet still is the refuge for isolation and escapism. I don’t think that will change, but maybe those people will be happier in the future.

Gam*rs need reeducation.

Is gamer a swear word now too?

Always has been 😎

Man, gaming communities are so fucking toxic.

@[email protected]
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I put wheels on my car which are a cheap copy of a very popular wheel because they were $500 not $2000 and I dont race. Every car meet someone has to comment that Im running “fakes” and try to give me a hard time about it. Yeah, Ive got a mortgage and a kid. Fuck off with your Supreme snapback ass hypebeast bullshit. I’m building the car I can afford.

People are toxic, even communities who preach peace and love as their doctrine have people who will whip out the moral-cock ruler and start shit over who is more peaceful and loving.

Einar
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I agree. [email protected] is a pleasant exception.

I didn’t know they’re here. I only go to reddit for the coordinates exchange sub. Thanks!

Einar
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They could use some more engagement, but they’re a pleasant bunch. AFAIK.

lad
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Now I want to start playing NMS, I’ve had it in my backlog for a while

MentalEdge
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I don’t understand people who “demand” things from volunteers. Open source devs, modders, and still recently content creators are/were treated like public service workers, by some.

Imagine if we went around treating artists as if they were obligated to please each of us individually with their every piece? I’m very happy to see this attitude improve with streaming and youtube, where creators are more and more met with care and support when they have to step away for a bit or retire entirely.

It sadly seems like this modder was eventually putting in tremendous effort, in a vain attempt to please absolutely everyone using her mods. But that isn’t a good reason to work for free.

Any work I do for free, is something I do because I want to, but this modder explicitly says she did work she didn’t want to do in order to please fans. And I can’t help but ask, why? (I know why, but someone should have cared enough to show her she is allowed to just say no, and do whatever she prefers.)

The blurb about her doing music is how you’re SUPPOSED to feel doing something for fun. I’m happy that she found her way to something that makes her feel that way.

it doesnt even have to be a mod, just free. See what happened with AetherSX2(android ps2 emulator) and how a bunch of people kept pestering a dev till he basiclaly quit working on it on mobile because they ask for a lot for something that was literally free.

You ever see steam discussions for early access games? Jesus fucking Christ people are entitled as shit.

@[email protected]
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Aren’t those paid (or at least they can be)? I think that’s an entirely different can of worms…

early access games are also notorious for being dogshite and left as such, or they’re fine but with obvious flaws which are never fixed because “bro it’s still in early access!”

It really does depend on the game, though. Going Medieval for instance has been in early access for almost three years, but it’s three years of active development. Just about every week brings some kind of update, whether it’s little coding and qol stuff, to full upgrades and new mechanics being added in. They’re almost done with their roadmap.

these are the exceptions that prove the rule

Rimworld was another shining example. Its actual early access was a forum release, the Steam EA was polishing.

That being said I have a dead EA or two in my library. Starforge comes to mind…

People do this with artists too. Especially the moment you offer anything in the way of free commissions for a specific community and such.

Many forums had gfx threads, where members who enjoy putting together banners and such would offer to make something for those who asked. A good friend of mine ran one in a certain game’s forum for a while and the absolute entitlement in which some of those people acted (in regards to speed and nitpicking about minor things) was disgusting. It was maybe 1 in 25 people but it soured the whole thing for her, understandably so. The moment you give people a little finger wrt their requests, one of those people will take the whole hand. The same likely applies to modding.

And I’m sure being a woman doing gaming stuff isn’t helping because there’s way too much sexism in gaming culture, even though there are also a lot of subcommunities that are super welcoming to everyone.

Schadrach
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The moment you give people a little finger wrt their requests, one of those people will take the whole hand. The same likely applies to modding.

I suppose that depends on which finger.

@[email protected]
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This broad dynamic isn’t new and it isn’t unique either to gaming or to men. Every single creative volunteer community on the net is filled with assholes and drama llamas, of any and all genders. It’s just the nature of the thing. You see the same things over and over with game modding, cracking, romhacking, emulation, manga scanlation, anime fansubbing, vocaloid production, mmd modeling, fanfic, fanart, and so on and on.

People often (generally?) are willing to invest the time and energy into whatever it is that they’re going to post online at least in large part because they crave the attention they hope it will bring, and specifically, they want to be lauded for their talent and skill.

And that often runs up against the fact that an awful lot of the responses they’re going to get are going to come from self-absorbed and entitled assholes bitching because they don’t like whatever it is that they’re getting for free, and think they have to be accommodated.

And very often, the response from the creator, unsurprisingly really, is to effectively (or even literally) say, “Fine then - fuck you all. I’m done.”

And 'round and 'round it goes, and has from the start, and likely will never stop. It’s just an unfortunate but pretty much inevitable clash between a personality type that’s likely to create and share something online for free and a personality type that’s likely to comment on something somebody else created and shared with them for free.

FuzzyRedPanda
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I don’t disagree with you but I feel that it is important to recognize and call out the misogyny element in this story. The gaming community has a pervasive sexism problem that’s normalized, and that part is unique in that it all comes from men.

I have only ever played three games online. The first was Final Fantasy XI, and I was part of a group/guild with nice people. It was fun!

The next was Team Fortress 2 because my husband wanted me to play with him. The vitriol and misogyny hurled at me over voice chat after two matches made me never play again.

The last was Destiny, and I turned off voice chat completely.

but I feel that it is important to recognize and call out the misogyny element in this story

I don’t.

I think that countering misogyny with misandry is rather obviously a losing strategy.

FuzzyRedPanda
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How was it countered with misandry?

I don’t want to hammer on this really, because I think you mean well, but…

You’re not condemning the specific assholes who treated you poorly - you’re condemning “men” generally. Your point and your focus isn’t that they were assholes, but that they were men, as if that’s the actual problem - as if their failure isn’t being assholes, but simply being men.

I don’t know if that’s your actual view, but that is the way it comes across. And broadly, that view is part of the problem, since it alienates men who deserve no blame and diverts attention from those who do. And that’s exactly what I meant when I said that countering misogyny with misandry is a poor strategy.

This is the sexism that we saw come out during the election. We thought the country was getting better but they were just quietly simmering but connecting online.

I said that with an American slanted focus but sadly it’s worldwide too.

davel [he/him]
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We thought the country was getting better

Who the hell thought the country was getting better? No one I know. This is the same weak basket of deplorables excuse the DNC used for Hillary Clinton’s loss. Because they’ll blame anyone but themselves for their failures.

The Democrats fail because they’ve embraced grinding neoliberalism for an entire generation, because they abandoned the working class long ago. The DNC crushed Sanders—twice—because even a little social safety net, as a treat, is a bridge too far for them. Why the Democratic Party CANNOT and WILL NOT be Reformed

I said that with an American slanted focus but sadly it’s worldwide too.

Fascism isn’t on the rise in the US in particular and the West in general for no reason. The cause is ever-worsening neoliberalism, which is monopoly capitalism in decay. I wrote about this two months ago, but I’ll spare everyone the copypasta and just link to it.

I did, for one

@[email protected]
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This is where my brain went, too. Even looking at this Lemmy thread. 6 of the 10 most upvoted top level comments (including THE most upvoted) are “not meee”, “not alllll men”, defensive crap or “well she should have just…” and “even men have to deal with it toooo” like damn. We ARE fucked.

@[email protected]
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It’s almost like people ignore men’s issues and scapegoat them at every opportunity for the sake of women.

If men had said they picked the bear it would have been framed as misogyny.

Case in point. Some dude just got murdered by the cops cuz the home invader was a woman and the cops saw a man fighting a woman and shot the man by default.

Men will never ever get the benefit of the doubt, but when we try to demand it we are just crybabies.

Schadrach
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It’s almost like people ignore men’s issues and scapegoat them at every opportunity for the sake of women.

Men will never ever get the benefit of the doubt, but when we try to demand it we are just crybabies.

Welcome to society. Frankly, it’s malagency (mis-assignment of agency, specifically in a fashion that often makes men responsible for things that happen to them even when they really aren’t and often absolves women of that responsibility when they really should have it) all the way down.

Malagency as a lens predicts reality better than a lot of other gender focused lenses. “What would happen if women are believed to be less responsible for what happens than they really are and men are believed to be more responsible for what happens than they really are?” tends to map to reality better than “What would happen if everything in society were created by men to benefit men at the expense of women and to oppress women?” Especially once you stop looking narrowly at the top few percent of men, where the two lenses give similar results.

and the cops saw a man fighting a woman and shot the man by default.

Something like 95% of people shot by police are men. This of course is not discriminatory on the grounds that men are evil, violent savages unlike every other group that are disproportionately shot by police who are innocent victims of oppression.

Welcome to the world of making software for random people, almost certainly made worse by she being a woman.

As others pointed out, most people do appreciate it, but they tend to be silent about it, whilst a small minority are demanding little whinny bitches (in a non-gendered way) who think they’re owed service and some are even trolls.

To those reading this, I suggest when you get something you like for free you at least give some feedback that you liked it and, if the person has some kind of sponsoring scheme going on and you really like it, consider contributing, if only to incentivise more of the same.

Those on the other side are people too and they will appreciate it.

Welcome to the world of making software for random people, almost certainly made worse by she being a woman.

I first read this and thought you were saying the software was almost certainly made worse and got all indignant then parsed it a second time and relaxed

@[email protected]
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A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky, dangerous animals and you know it.

A rather astute observation found in an unlikely place, and one of my favorite move lines of all times.

-Agent K

- Michael Scott

Stuff like this is why I don’t tell people I game. The Gamer Stink is real and I don’t want to be guilty by association. Seriously, go touch grass. The things that you’re denigrating someone else for are pixels and code on a computer. Find some way to not be garbage humans.

Her music is interesting. Hope she ends up happier

i’m sorry that you have to deal with the outfall of this, OP. gamers are notoriously the most overly sensitive group to generalize, even when they’re meant to think “i recognize that this is pointing out bad apples in my community”. instead, they immediately start defending themselves as if you specifically named them

the sane response is to go “wow that is awful. the gaming community does indeed contain some terrible people, i am glad to be one of the good ones and will distance myself from this behavior”

@[email protected]
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the sane response is to go “wow that is awful. the gaming community does indeed contain some terrible people, i am glad to be one of the good ones and will distance myself from this behavior”

I’d say the saner response is none at all. This seems like a pretty niche community issue somewhere on the internet involving at most <100 people. I doubt anyone here is closer then 3 degrees of separation from anyone involved. Why would you expect any of the outsiders here to “take a stand,” based on incomplete information?

@[email protected]
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Yes, but how many of these niche communities are there? Hell, lemmy itself is a niche community and everybody here should take a stand against this sort of stuff occurring here.

@[email protected]
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On here I’d 100% agree, though if some member here got into some kind of discord drama that you weren’t apart of, why would you choose a side? You’ll have incomplete information, and no doubt one of them will claim they were harassed while leaving out some important details.

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