Timeline of Gamergate
From RationalWiki
Gamergate is what happened when the reactionary rejects of 4chan teamed up to attack women who make and write about video games with a molecule-thin veneer of being a consumer movement for "free speech" and "ethics in video game journalism". These are their stories.
Contents |
August 2014
- August 8: Eron Gjoni publishes "The Zoe Post", accusing his ex-partner, game developer Zoe Quinn of infidelity and spreads it on forums such as Something Awful, Penny Arcade, as well as 4chan's boards /b/, /v/ and /r9k/.
- (Side note: According to the IRC logs "The Zoe Post" was later edited by Gjoni)
- (Side note 2: Gjoni's accusations were untenable and later on debunked by himself.)
- August 16:
- In a post Gjoni pretends to condemn the harassment against Zoe Quinn, while also admitting that he spread his blog on various forums such as Penny Arcade and Something Awful, in order to create a backlash against his ex.
- MundaneMatt publishes a video based on the information from "The Zoe Post". The video is shortly unavailable. MundaneMatt claims that this is due to a DMCA claim against his video by Zoe Quinn. The only source of this DCMA claim is MundaneMatt.
- (Side note: The tactic to use false DMCA claims as a means to discredit an opponent had been pioneered by hacker, white supremacist and GNAA co-founder Andrew "weev" Auernheimer during his harassment campaign against game developer Kathy Sierra.)
- August 17:
- Eron Gjoni also spreads his defamation in the forums of The Escapist, finding an audience willing to listen to him. Forums of The Escapist would be a major hub for proto-Gamergate activity, despite attempts of the staff to contain the bile.
- The first larger Reddit community to pick up on Gjoni's defamation is the hostile /r/TumblrinAction which rehashes a previous shitstorm Zoe Quinn had to face, when she was targeted by the Wizardchan community in 2013.
- August 18:
- Members of the 4chan boards /pol/ and /v/ start to jump on Gjoni's bandwagon.
- Only hours later, MundaneMatt and others gather in the #burgersandfries IRC channel and begin organizing the harassment campaign against Zoe Quinn, giving it its first proper name, "Quinnspiracy". They immediately start talking about doxxing her and others (such as Joshua Boggs). Their stated goal is "WE'RE CRASHING HER CAREER WITH NO SURVIVORS" [see IRC logs @ Aug 18 17.23.09]. They coordinate with InternetAristocrat (among others) in the release of his video.
- YouTuber John "TotalBiscuit" Bain gets contacted by members of the IRC and gets informed by them.
- InternetAristocrat releases his first video with the material provided by Gjoni [the video is no longer available, see below]; it can still be watched on this mirror
- The IRC discusses migration to 8chan, after the mods of 4chan keep deleting the Zoe Quinn doxx. The /burgers/ forum on 8chan, precursor to /gg/ and /gamergate/, gets created [see IRC logs @ Aug 18 18.34.33].
- TotalBiscuit propagates the slander against Zoe Quinn to his more than 350.000 followers on Twitter, basing his "facts" on the video by the InternetAristocrat, "The Zoe Post" and possible information from the IRC members.
- (Side note: TotalBiscuit got heavily criticized by independent games developers in reaction to his Twitlonger.)
- August 19:
- Zoe Quinn, having been doxxed on /v/ is harassed via phone calls made to her family.
- The Fine Young Capitalists' Matthew Rappard claims on Reddit that Zoe Quinn sabotaged their game jam and doxxed him, without providing any proof (the claims he made under his username SillySladar were deleted and/or edited later on). His call for support is being spread on Reddit and 4chan
- (Side note: Most of TFYC's accusations seem to be based upon a conversation with Zoe Quinn from March, compiled by /u/metroidcomposite )
- A Reddit thread on /r/gaming/ about TotalBiscuit's hitpiece gets mass-deleted due to witch-hunting (a breach of global Reddit rules). This was used as an example of "censorship" and "collusion" between Reddit and Zoe Quinn, after one /r/gaming mod warned Zoe Quinn about the on-going doxxing in the thread.
- Polytron founder Phil Fish calls out TotalBiscuit for his attack on Zoe Quinn and becomes a target for harassment in the process.
- August 20:
- Stephen Totilo, editor-in-chief of Kotaku, debunks the claim that Zoe Quinn's personal relationship with staff writer Nathan Grayson (one of the few partners named by Eron Gjoni in "The Zoe Post") resulted in any positive reviews for her game as no such review exists on the site and the only article ever written by Grayson that mentions her is from before they ever dated.
- Game developer site NeoGaf cracks down on users who keep on defending the dox and harassment of Zoe Quinn, resulting in accusations of censorship, etc..
- August 21:
- In the #burgersandfries IRC channel, the organizers celebrate obtaining Phil Fish's "home" folder and discuss how to take control of his website, hosted by Cloudflare [see IRC logs @ Aug 22 02.34.26]. After immense harassment Phil Fish puts his company and its game "Fez" on sale, leaves social media and game development.
- The same people also attempt to penetrate Zoe Quinn's accounts but with less success.
- 4chan's /pol/ board gets behind funding The Fine Young Capitalists' current crowdfunding campaign, nicknaming it "Operation Chemo", because "they would support the cancer", which would make them "PR-untouchable".
- August 22:
- Creation of Gamergate's mascot, Vivian James, on 4chan's /v/ board, with a color scheme that perpetuates the rape joke "daily dose" [see IRC logs @ Aug 24 19.54.13].
- As one of the first publications, The Daily Dot reports on the doxxing and hacking of Zoe Quinn and Phil Fish.
- 4chan starts to clean out its board, possibly due to the lots of negative press after the hack of Phil Fish and Zoe Quinn [see IRC logs @ Aug 22 16.02.37].
- 8chan admin Fredrick "Hotwheels" Brennan shows up in the IRC channel under the name "copypaste" in order to inform the others that he was contacted by Zoe Quinn's lawyers [see IRC logs @ Aug 22 10.34.29]. He advocates for the move of the group to 8chan.
- (Side note: He admits "i moved the server to NL for loli purposes", see IRC logs @ Aug 22 16.22.2)
- August 23: InternetAristocrat publishes his second video [now deleted, see below].
- August 24:
- Eron Gjoni gets contacted by the members of #burgersandfries and shortly joins the IRC channel [see IRC logs @ Aug 24 20.08.20]. He admits that he does not care about journalism and "mentioned Nathan worked for kotaku because I figured I'd leave the community to make what it wanted out of the implications". [see IRC logs @ Aug 24 23.59.42]
- Under the nickname "PaperDinosaur", an editor of TechRaptor joins the IRC [see IRC log @ Aug 24 14.51.01] and coordinates the efforts of his site with the group there.
- (Side note: He gets banned on Aug 31, due to infighting with other members of the group.)
- /r/KotakuInAction, one of Gamergate's future main hubs, gets founded in order to gather those who "demand reform" or - as the IRC puts it - "reddit mods made a subreddit for zoe stuff" [see IRC logs Aug 24 16.50.18]. The first scoop is the exposition of a friendship between Kotaku journalist Patricia Hernandez and Game Developer Anna Anthropy.
- The crowdfunding campaign of The Fine Young Capitalists gets hacked. TFYC blame this on Zoe Quinn later on without providing any proof.
- Davis Aurini and Jordan Owen announce their planned documentary to take down Anita Sarkeesian. Their price? US$15 thousand a month, minimum.
- August 25:
- Eron Gjoni does an AMA on /r/drama and keeps on revealing Zoe Quinn's usernames and passwords to the mob.
- Anita Sarkeesian publishes "Women as Background Decoration Part 2" and becomes another major target for Gamergate afterwards.
- August 26:
- Polygon updates its ethics policy to include Patreon support. Gamergate claims this as a victory.
- Kotaku publishes a blog post about possible ethical breaches. Gamergate claims this as a victory.
- Due to the ongoing massive harassment and threats, Anita Sarkeesian gets the FBI involved.
- (Side note: This becomes later on part of a larger FBI investigation.)
- After re-tweeting Anita Sarkeesian's newest video, legendary game developer Tim Schafer gets attacked on Twitter. He gets into a heated exchange with Youtuber Jon "JonTron" Jafari. This leads to the creation of the proto-Gamergate hashtag #istandwithjontron in defense of JonTron's dismissal of Sarkeesian's video. This also leads to first attempts of connecting the proto-Gamergate Twitter activists.
- August 27:
- Ongoing death threats force Anita Sarkeesian to temporarily leave her home.
- By now Zoe Quinn is in a desperate state and gets mocked by the hate mob on Twitter.
- Adam Baldwin coins the hashtag #GamerGate, linking to the videos by the InternetAristocrat (and not reacting to the articles from the next day, as many Gamergaters claim).
- August 28:
- Reacting to the ongoing toxicity Leigh Alexander publishes the article "'Gamers' don't have to be your audience. 'Gamers' are over." on 'Gamasutra The article gets lots of reception among fellow journalists and gets reframed by a variety of journalists in the following days.
- Chris Plante for Polygon's "An awful week to care about video games"
- Casey Johnston for Ars Technica's "The death of the “gamers” and the women who “killed” them"
- Devil Wilson for Gamasutra's "A Guide to Ending "Gamers""
- Luke Plunkett for Kotaku's "We Might Be Witnessing The 'Death of An Identity'"
- Joseph Bernstein for BuzzFeed's "Gaming Is Leaving “Gamers” Behind"
- Patrick O'Rourke for Financial Post's "Sexism, misogyny and online attacks: It’s a horrible time to consider yourself a ‘gamer’"
- Arthur Chu for The Daily Beast's "It's Dangerous to Go Alone: Why Are Gamers So Angry?"
- Dan Golding's "The End of Gamers"
- These enter Gamergate's tale of collusion as the "Gamers Are Dead" articles [see IRC logs @ Aug 28 21.40.25], claiming that they were meant to oppress gamers.
- (Side note: Actually, Dan Golding's blog post was released before Leigh Alexander's article, but it was quickly thrown together with the other articles.)
- The situation is so dire, that even the International Games Developer Association releases an official statement.
- (Side note: Gamergate likes to point out that the statement does not condemn Gamergate. At this time the hashtag has only existed for one day.)
- Reacting to the ongoing toxicity Leigh Alexander publishes the article "'Gamers' don't have to be your audience. 'Gamers' are over." on 'Gamasutra The article gets lots of reception among fellow journalists and gets reframed by a variety of journalists in the following days.
- August 29: The Fine Young Capitalists are backpedalling on their claims that Zoe Quinn doxxed or hacked them, possibly due to potential legal ramifications.
- August 30:
- The InternetAristocrat creates a third video [The video is no longer available, see below].
- Alexander Macris, founder of The Escapist, comes out in favor of proto-Gamergate in the neverending forum thread against Zoe Quinn. In a response to Anita Sarkeesian, he reposts an old "call to arms" on Twitter.
- August 31:
- MRA activist Mike Cernovich, one of Gamergate's "e-celebs", quickly nicknamed "Based Lawyer", joins the movement, grandstanding by taunting Anita Sarkeesian after the attacks on her.
- Gamergate launches its operation "Disrespectful nod", creating email campaigns to cut off ad revenue from publications critical of Gamergate.
September 2014
- September 1:
- Hundreds of game developers condemn the ongoing harassment in an open letter
- After writing a piece on harassment of women in the tech industry, which mentions Sarkeesian and Quinn, games journalist Jenn Frank gets harassed because she supported Quinn's Patreon, a fact that the Guardian editors considered insignificant, although Frank disclosed it. Frank gets targeted by Gamergate anyway.
- Breitbart.com writer Milo Yiannopolous joins the movement, possibly recruited by the InternetAristocrat. Milo publishes a summary of the Gamergate narrative thus far.
- (Side note: The article makes a huge impact on the stagnate site )
- September 2: #NotYourShield is starting up, planned on /v/ as a "special jamming op", in order to expose "SJW hypocrisy". (The invention of the hashtag is most often attributed to @j_millerworks). Its first use is by Twitter user and /pol/ participant Ninouh90
- (Side note 1: The IRC members discussed how non-minority members should join #NotYourShield in order to boost it [see IRC logs @ Sep 03 00.04.52].)
- (Side note 2: Jay Allen, a.k.a. @a_man_in_black, would later point out that many accounts in #NotYourShield were sockpuppets from an earlier /pol/ campaign, "Operation Lollipop", that had been covered in "Clutch" magazine )
- September 3:
- The IRC organizers celebrate that Jenn Frank left her job at the Guardian [see IRC log @ Sep 03 21.32.19]. In order to protect its image the group aims to control the harassment of Frank [See IRC log @ Sep 03 22.03.43]. But quickly admits that it can't do anything about it: "its too big now".
- As one of the first major newspapers, The Guardian calls out Gamergate
- September 4:
- In desperation of the ongoing harassment, Jenn Frank, takes a leave from her profession for several weeks.
- (Side note: Frank resumed her journalistic career on Dec 18 )
- The Los Angeles Times publishes a critical article on Gamergate and the harassment of Anita Sarkeesian in its print edition
- In desperation of the ongoing harassment, Jenn Frank, takes a leave from her profession for several weeks.
- September 6:
- Aleander Macris of The Escapist calls out to the Gamergate organizers and gets in touch with them in a new IRC [see IRC log @ Sep 06 14:35:26]
- After the Wikipedia entry for Gamergate is mentioned on KotakuinAction for the first time, Gamergater turn up on Wikipedia and complain about the "bias" of the entry
- Zoe Quinn publishes the data she gathered on the various raiding boards and IRC, which later on leads to the release of the entire IRC logs of #burgersandfries by 4chan mods. The IRC is abandoned on the same day, a new IRC is created elsewhere.
- September 7: After many major edits to the Wikipedia article on Zoe Quinn, two Gamergate supporters get called out on Wikipediocracy. The writers publish many personal details about them.
- September 9: In a show of solidarity with Zoe Quinn, the New Yorker reviews her game "Depression Quest"
- September 11: Milo Yiannopoulos is on fire: After falsely accusing Zoe Quinn of embezzling money from her game, he falsely accuses Anita Sarkeesian of lying about her police report and then celebrates on 4chan
- September 12:
- Gamergate to target Mattie Brice, game developer and vocal feminist, because of her friendship with Zoe Quinn and for being on the panel of the Independant Games Festival
- Milo Yiannopoulos' stories on Zoe Quinn and Anita Sarkeesian get debunked
- The Guardian interviews Zoe Quinn, her first appearance in a major publication since the beginning of Gamergate
- Liana Kerzner writes her first article on Gamergate, attempting to be neutral on matters.
- September 15: WikiLeaks endorses Gamergate and adds some conspiracy theories of their own, linking to a video by the MRA website A Voice For Men to drive its point home.
- September 16: Christina Hoff Sommers, commentator for the American Enterprise institute, chimes in by downplaying a study by the Entertainment Software Association which contradicts her "egalitarian feminism". She is quickly adopted as another of Gamergate's "e-celebs", receiving the nickname "Based Mom".
- September 17:
- Milo Yiannopoulos claims to have "exposed" the professional mailing list GameJournoPro as a secret, agenda pushing conspiracy
- A news report unveils that there was a bomb threat against Anita Sarkeesian during Games Developper Conference 6 months earlier
- September 18: 4chan admin moot doubles down on the site's "no personal information/no raiding/no calls to invasion" rules. This is seen as a betrayal by Gamergate which started out on 4chan and a move to 8chan is planned
- September 19: After creating a fake Twitter account in order to mock Gamergate game developer Brianna Wu, becomes a target of harassment
- September 20: #NotYourShield inventor @j_millerworks loses his job. This is blamed on critics of Gamergate and often used as proof of harassment against Gamergate, although @j_millerworks admitted himself that the layoff was a case of mistaken identity.
- September 21:
- Milo Yiannopoulos tweets that he received a syringe in the mail. He blames opponents of Gamergate, but does not want to "make himself the story" and declines to contact authorities.
- Brad Wardell, CEO of software developer Stardock, comes out in defense of Gamergate.
- (Side note: Wardell has an existing grudge against Ben Kuchera, Kotaku, and somehow Zoe Quinn as seen below.)
- The first pro-Gamergate Wikipedia editor, Titanium Dragon, gets banned due to his edit warring over the entry on Zoe Quinn (more will follow)
- September 22:
- Foundation of /r/GamerGhazi on Reddit, in order to mock Gamergate and support its victims
- Milo Yiannopoulos releases the full member list of the GameJournoPro mailing list, accusing them all of collusion and agenda pushing
- Milo Yiannopoulos holds a talk on 8chan, validating the site
- September 23:
- Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales comments on Gamergate for the first time
- Various Gamergate activists (Boogie2988, JonTron, Eron Gjoni, Adam Baldwin, Milo Yiannopoulos and shoe0nhead) get doxxed in an anonymous pastebin
- September 24: Damion Schubert, engineer at BioWare and Gamergate critic, posts a blog entry condemning Milo Yiannopoulos's coverage of what is apparently Ben Kuchera trying to ruin the life of Brad Wardell by tearing it apart and revealing what had actually happened between Wardell and a former employee who had filed a sexual harassment suit against him (and that Kuchera was not the original writer).
- September 25: Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales makes a first assessment of the Wikipedia article on Gamergate. Gamergate is not satisfied, the edit war goes on.
- September 26:
- Gamergate activists accuse a Wikipedia editor of slandering and doxxing without providing any proof of their accusations. The Wikipedia editor is later on banned from the topic.
- The Fine Young Capitalists, Gamergate's "weaponized charity", successfully closes its Indiegogo crowdfunding campaign at $71.000
- September 27: "Based lawyer" Mike Cernovich encourages members of Gamergate to dox its opponents.
- September 28:
- Gamergate organizer King of /pol/ claims to have been doxxed. At first he blames this on critics of Gamergate, later on he exposes the infighting behind the scenes and proves that the dox came from within Gamergate (see below).
- Pro-Gamergate game developer E. McNeil accuses PR representative Maya Kramer of sexual relations with jury members of the Independant Games Festival in order to secure an award for "The Stanley Parable". The accusation is nonsense because "The Stanley Parable" received an award decided by public vote. It does not stop Gamergate to paint Maya Kramer as a mastermind behind various activities against Gamergate and the "DiGRA conspiracy".
- September 29: Liana Kerzner writes a new article on Gamergate, blaming Gamergate and 8chan of ongoing harassment after she attempted to call out Milo Yiannopoulos on his misogynistic remark towards her
- September 30:
- In collaboration with Milo Yiannopoulos, pro-Gamergate blog TheRalphRetort, publishes a deeply demeaning and sexist hitpiece on Kerzner.
- Video game studio Running With Scissors,[wp] known for the extremely violent video game series Postal,[wp] comes out in support of Gamergate.
October 2014
- October 1:
- Gamergate finishes its exodus from 4chan to 8chan, which becomes its new home besides Reddit's /r/KotakuInAction
- Pro-Gamergate news site TechRaptor publishes a hitpiece on a community manager of the game "Mighty No.9" who has already been targeted by Gamergate before [see IRC log @ Sep 04 01.54.23]
- Intel pulls the ads on Gamasutra after a Gamergate emailing campaign. Gamergate claims this as a first major victory.
- October 3:
- Intel clarifies its position on the takedown of ads on Gamasutra, refusing to take positions in the "increasingly bitter debate in the gaming community". The statement condemns discrimination and sexism.
- Gamergate gets kicked off of Github because the "repository was being used as a central point for organizing harassment campaigns".
- October 4:
- Conspiracy central Infowars endorses Gamergate
- The InternetAristocrat claims to have been partly doxxed on 8chan and getting harassed on the phone. This is blamed on opponents of Gamergate, despite 8chan's firm pro-Gamergate stance.
- October 8:
- Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales gets harassed on Twitter by Gamergate supporters for the first time
- Infamous white supremacist and hacker Andrew "weev" Auernheimer endorses Gamergate
- October 9: Gamergate Thunderclap for social outreach ends. Despite widespread support from within Gamergate, it only manages 3716 supporters.
- October 10:
- The Escapist publishes another article on Gamergate, calling it "What Game Developers Think of #GamerGate". It is mostly made up of pro-Gamergate voices. After immense backlash the article is renamed "What Male Game Developers Think of #GamerGate" and several pro-Gamergate interviewees are removed due to harassment of staff of the Escapist later on
- (Side note: The Escapist would later be struck by the departure of high-profile contributors and massive layoffs.)
- Game developper Brianna Wu is driven from her home by death threats
- The Escapist publishes another article on Gamergate, calling it "What Game Developers Think of #GamerGate". It is mostly made up of pro-Gamergate voices. After immense backlash the article is renamed "What Male Game Developers Think of #GamerGate" and several pro-Gamergate interviewees are removed due to harassment of staff of the Escapist later on
- October 13:
- After heated discussions on NeoGaf Gamergate activist Boogie2988 gets perma-banned
- After Polygon publishes a review of "Bayonetta 2" which critizes the heroine's attire and the sexist undertone of the game, Gamergate throws a fit and screams bloody murder.
- The Guardian takes takes a firm stand against Gamergate
- MSNBC covers Gamergate, featuring an appearance by Brianna Wu
- October 14:
- An anonymous redditor decries the child pornography on 8chan for the first time
- Anita Sarkeesian cancels her talk at Utah State University due to threats of an anti-feminist killing spree
- (Side note: Blogger Zennistrad found potential links of the USU threat on 8chan )
- Writer and journalist Veerender Jubbal creates the hashtag #stopgamergate2014, in a show of solidarity for the victims of harassment.
- (Side note: Jubbal becomes a victim of harassment himself afterwards)
- October 15:
- The Washington Post covers Gamergate and the threats against Anita Sarkeesian. The Entertainment Software Association condemns the ongoing harassment in a statement to the newspaper.
- The ongoing campaign against Anita Sarkeesian appear on the frontpage of the New York Times, directly blaming Gamergate
- October 16:
- Gamergate and its ongoing campaign are covered by CNN
- The Southern Poverty Law Center puts Gamergate on its "Hatewatch" list
- Filmmaker and Gamergate critic Kyle Kallgren gets doxxed by Gamergate. Unlike earlier harassment, the Gamergate activist is not even hiding the fact that the movement is engaged in doxxing anymore.
- October 17: After the publication of the GameJournoPros list, an old case gets a new turn: Allistair Pinsof, a former employee of Destructoid who was fired after outing a suicidal trans woman on Twitter, accuses his former boss of conspiring against him with members of the "GameJournoPros" list.
- October 20: Allistair Pinsof accuses the members of GameJournosPro to have blacklisted him. Even though Pinsof does not condone Gamergate, he is quickly considered a key witness by the movement.
- October 21:
- Former NFL-player and avid gamer Chris Kluwe publishes a very widely circulated denounciation of Gamergate
- (Side note: Despite his outspokenness, Chris Kluwe would not be doxxed until 70 days later, unlike many female victims of Gamergate.)
- Dan Olson releases a critical analysis of Gamergate in video form
- Adobe clarifies that they do not advertise on Gawker Media. Gamergate claims this as a sign of support for the movement.
- Former NFL-player and avid gamer Chris Kluwe publishes a very widely circulated denounciation of Gamergate
- October 22:
- "Based lawyer" Mike Cernovich gets unintentionally doxxed by blogger Margaret Pless (IdleDilletante) when she links to his home address as he listed it as his office on a legal assistance website. He blames this on Zoe Quinn (after Quinn tweeted a link to Pless's blog post) and then claims to have avoided swatting because another post on Pless's blog describes how to report him to the LAPD crimestoppers hotline.
- Pro-Gamergate site Mangotron ends its coverage of Gamergate after the site owner got doxxed by Gamergate. The owner of Mangotron comes under fire from several Gamergate supporters, @Lizzyf620 among them, who would get a similar treatment a few months later (see below).
- Brad Wardell responds to Damion Schubert's article from a month prior. Schubert retracted and apologized.
- October 23: Actress and geek icon Felicia Day speaks out against Gamergate. She gets doxxed in the comment section of her own blog post within an hour.
- October 24: TotalBiscuit, Slade "RogueStar" Villena and various other Gamergate organizers take part in a livestream by the InternetAristocrat [the video is no longer available, see below]
- October 27:
- FILM CRIT HULK SMASH GAMERGATE
- Christina Hoff Sommers chimes in again with a second video, deflecting all attacks on Gamergate, because of "affectionate messages and declarations of support" for herself.
- Wikipedia admins start to sanction various opponents in the ongoing edit war. The list grows longer by the day.
- October 28: Adobe clarifies on its corporate blog, that it does not support Gamergate, nor harassment in any form.
- October 29:
- TotalBiscuit interviews Steven Totilo, editor-in-chief of Kotaku, about Ethics in Games Media
- Anita Sarkeesian appears on the Colbert Report
- October 31: A redditor gets a response from IGN which promises to publish its ethic policies. Gamergate claims this as a victory
November 2014
- November 1: Brad Wardell publically contacts an artist on Twitter who had drawn a comic strip where Zoe Quinn has sex with someone for a review, asking the artist to work for Stardock.
- November 3:
- It is recognized that Gamergate cannot tell the difference between two Asian male Gamergate critics during their harassment spree on Twitter: one is Jeopardy! champion and writer Arthur Chu and the other is Gameranx editor-in-chief Ian Miles Cheong whom Gamergate accuses of being a neo-Nazi because of decade-old chatlogs.
- Programmer Randi Harper plays around with an idea for an autoblocking tool on Twitter. Gamergate immediately attempts to stop the project.
- Neonazi forum Stormfront endorses Gamergate.
- November 4:
- Eron Gjoni openly admits once more that he never cared about journalism in his pursuit of revenge against his ex
- A fake account of Nick Denton, founder of Kotaku owner Gawker Media, spreads a message that there is a whistleblower in his own company. Gamergate organizer King of /pol/ spreads the news.
- November 5: After achieving its goal of confusing Gamergate, the fake Nick Denton account gets deleted. King of /pol/ is blamed for its disappearance and the event marks his ultimate fall from Gamergate's grace.
- November 6: Gamergate organizer King of /pol/ leaves Gamergate after having come under fire and blows the whistle on the organizers behind Gamergate. In recordings of their Skype calls and chats of a group that he refers to as a "cabal", he shows how Gamergate organizers doxxed their own, among them himself and the Internet Aristocrat; how pro-Gamergate game developer RogueStar was attacked with sockpuppet accounts; how other Gamergate activists were harassed and how he himself was threatened of being discredited to his employer. He also implies that the GNAA is involved, having gathered 6923 real names of various Gamergate supporters for potentially malicious purposes.
- November 7:
- Comedian Brock Wilbur gets doxxed
- Mike Morhaime, CEO of game development behemoth Blizzard, condemns the ongoing harassment and consents when Co-host Geoff Knightley mentions Gamergate by name
- (Side note: 8chan's Gamergate board had called out for a boycott of Blizzard products the day before)
- Milo Yiannopoulos spends an entire evening defaming Ian Miles Cheong, editor-in-chief of Gameranx. For this Yiannopoulos' Twitter account gets suspended for a day.
- (Side note: Yiannopoulos claimed that his suspension was a mistake and thus revoked after just one day. This is false. The suspension was valid, but was only for one day.)
- November 9: After prolonged harassment Mattie Brice jokes about using her vote in the Independant Games Festival (IGF) awards against Gamergate. This immediately attracts the attention of Gamergate and turns up the harassment. After IGF condemns Brice's tweet, she resigns from the IGF. The IGF responds with an all-out call for solidarity with Brice and asks her to remain a member of the IGF
- November 10: Gamergate calls out on 8chan in order to slander critical Wikipedia editors in the Arbitration Committee
- November 11: Randi Harper publishes the first version of the "Good Game Autoblocker" for Twitter
- November 12: Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales attempts to defuse the ongoing edit war by offering Gamergate to write an article on Wikia
- November 13: Intel re-instates its advertisement campaign at Gamasutra
- November 14: After an ESA scientist comes under attack for wearing an obscene T-shirt during an official announcement, Gamergate adopts #shirtgate" as its (short-lived) new cause
- November 15: Jim Sterling, host of The Jimquisition, announces he has left The Escapist.
- November 17: Paul Elam, the patient zero MRA and founder of A Voice for Men, endorses Gamergate.
- November 18: In a bizarre move, Davis Aurini and Jordan Owen interview Jack Thompson, a disbarred lawyer who had attempted to prohibit the sales of violent games, in order to discredit Anita Sarkeesian for their documentary
- November 19: The International Games Developer Association creates the "Harassment Resources" list which includes various sites and tools maligned by Gamergate
- November 24: Little by little, Randi Harper's tool gets spun into a source of malice by Gamergate, calling it a "blacklist"
- November 25: After being accusing of "sealioning", Gamergate organizes a fundraiser to adopt an actual sea lion.
- November 26: The InternetAristocrat declares to leave Gamergate after infighting and denounces the movement. All his videos are henceforth unavailable.
- (Side note: He returns to social media and the movement about 3 weeks later.)
- November 27: Wikipedia's Arbitration Committee (Arbcom) accepts to find a solution to the ongoing edit war
- November 30: After several threatening tweets, a Gamergater turns up in front of the building Randi Harper works in
December 2014
- December 2:
- Gamergate on 8chan doxxes the family of Brianna Wu
- Twitter updates its reporting system. The use of an alligator in its instructional video is seen as a jab against Gamergate
- Mod Niko of Death gets control of 8chan's Gamergate board /gg/ and makes supposed GNAA member Teridax a mod. The Gamergate community is alarmed by this change as it does not trust Niko of Death anymore. This leads to a migration to 8chan's /gamergate/ board.
- Zoe Quinn discovers Brad Wardell's conversation with the cartoonist who harassed her and documents Wardell's subsequent misogynistic attacks on her.
- Liana Kerzner does her best to get back in Gamergate's good graces by insulting Anita Sarkeesian
- December 4: With the migration from /gg/ to /gamergate/ on 8chan, doxxing worsens as the mods condone doxxing by proxy.
- December 5:
- Gamergate organizer and game developer RogueStar attempts to blackmail opponents of Gamergate, due to this and various other harassment RogueStar gets banned multiple times, but always succeeds to evade the ban.
- Charity AbleGamers gets contacted by a representative of porn star Mercedes Carrera to organize a charity stream. They are at the time unaware Carrera is a Gamergate supporter and this has been planned on /r/KotakuInAction.
- December 6: Margaret Pless publishes a teardown of Eron Gjoni's state of mind, exposing his abusive behavior
- December 7: Ablegamers questions the transparency and motives of the charity and shies away from it. Instantly it comes under fire by Gamergate supporters and its site suffers from a DDoS attack.
- December 8: Gamergate organizer and game developer RogueStar spreads documents from the hack of Phil Fish's computer in an attempt to slander the Independant Games Festival.
- (Side note: RogueStar's own game lost an IGF award against Phil Fish's game Fez.)
- December 10: Milo Yiannopoulos publishes a hitpiece on programmer and journalist Shanley Kane who had dared to point out sexism in the tech industry. The article makes her a target for Gamergate in the process
- December 11:
- Mercedes Carrera and The Fine Young Capitalists team up for "The Porn Charity".
- Allistair Pinsof defuses some of the accusations he made earlier and aims to prevent further harassment by Gamergate of the trans woman he outed
- It is reported that James Desborough, a tabletop RPG author, mistook Randi Harper's bot account for a real person and argued with it. The same day, it is revealed that his new game #Gamergate: The Card Game has been removed from the tabletop RPG online retailer DriveThruRPG due to its controversial subject matter.
- December 13: The Gamergate Wikia entry on the ongoing Wikipedia edit war gets deleted by site admins as it singled out various Wikipedia editors which had dared to oppose Gamergate's efforts to distort the Wikipedia article. Jimmy Wales calls the Wikia article an attack page and thus draws the ire of Gamergate onto himself
- December 18:
- The FBI discloses that it has an "pending or prospective law enforcement proceedings" regarding Gamergate, but it does not disclose anything else
- Jimmy Wales answers to an email by a Gamergate redditor and criticizes the movement. The movement turns on him very quickly.
- December 20:
- Jimmy Wales gets attacked by Gamergate on Twitter. Soon thereafter he gives up communicating with Gamergate.
- Popular Gamergate supporter @Lizzyf620 gets to write an op-ed for MRA site A Voice For Men
- December 21: Patreon updates its community guidelines putting an end to 8chan's crowd-funding on this site.
- December 22: Dan Olson exposes the child pornography on 8chan. Gamergate attempts to blame Olson of spreading child pornography in order to defuse the severity of his accusations
- December 23: Dan Olson gets doxxed.
- December 27: Margaret Pless talks about the harassment she received from Mike Cernovich which led to his doxxing
- December 28: Camgirl "Princess Kora" starts her #BoobFreq series, dressing up as Anita Sarkeesian and performing sexual acts on herself. Gamergate goes all in. In the end, however, she doesn't make as much off of Gamergate as she hoped.
- December 29: Gamergate critic Chris Kluwe and Gamergate's "based lawyer" Mike Cernovich engage in a Youtube debate, one of the first direct discussion between a vocal proponent and a vocal critic of Gamergate
- December 30:
- [Date uncertain] Probable formation of /baphomet/ on 8chan, an "old-style raid" board, which claims independance from Gamergate, despite its founder openly embracing Gamergate. /baphomet/ almost exclusively targets Gamergate critics.
- (Side note: In February, a /baphomet/ mod would openly admit that "Gamergate is not completely uninvolved".)
- Due to the debate, Gamergate critic and ex-NFL player Chris Kluwe gets doxxed on 8chan's newly founded /baphomet/ board
- 8chan site owner Fredrick Brennan publishes an article in the neo-nazi publication Daily Stormer
- December 31:
- 8chan's board doxxes Gamergate critic and watchdog Sarah Nyberg (a.k.a. @srhbutts), including the name she used prior to her transition.
- Jay Allen, vocal critic of Gamergate and analyst of the movement, is given space on BoingBoing to elaborate on a previous analysis of the connection between Gamergate's toxicity and "chan" culture
- (Side note: Two more articles of his, also building up previous research, elaborate further on the "professional victimizers" of Gamergate and the origins of /baphomet/)
January 2015
- January 1: After already having been doxxed, Gamergate organizes a writeup of Sarah Nyberg's dox on Encyclopedia Dramatica, which contains further slander. The slander is then spread across the movement by many supporters, including Milo Yiannopoulos.
- January 2: /baphomet/ picks up the dox of Sarah Nyberg and expands on it, in order to find more "trolling material".
- January 3:
- Game Developer, Gamergate critic and vigilant Gamergate observer Israel Galvez gets doxxed by baphomet
- Former Gamergate supporter, turned critic @pixelgoth gets almost swatted, after /baphomet/ was "bored". Fortunately the police went to an old adress of hers.
- January 6: During CES, Intel pledges $300 million to a campaign to increase diversity in technology. For this purpose Intel intends to cooperate with two NGOs, reviled by Gamergate (among many others). This is seen as a rebuke to Gamergate and the movement responds by an attempt to take over the #ces2015 hashtag.
- January 7: 8chan suffers from a DDoS attack and stays offline for about 3 days. Despite various accusations, the origin of the attack remains unknown.
- January 8: The Electronic Frontier Foundation condemns Gamergate as a "magnet for harassment".
- January 9:
- After he had already been doxxed before, vocal critic of Gamergate Israel Galvez, gets threatened by imminent "swatting" during the night of Jan 9, but can prevent the worst. Due to the police investigation the incident was not disclosed until January 13.
- David Draiman,[wp] lead singer and songwriter of heavy metal band Disturbed,[wp] comes out in support of Gamergate as he sees it as a throwback to the attempts at music censorship by the Parents Music Resource Center. Draiman, as a Jew, is told to look to Gamergate's primary discussions at 4chan/8chan's /pol/ "Politically Incorrect" boards to see the anti-semitism rampant amongst Gamergate but claims to see nothing.
- January 12:
- 8chan's domain gets seized for hosting child pornography. The site admin quickly finds a new registrar and reopens the site with another address.
- After 4 different persons report 8chan to its new hosting company Cloudflare, due to the child pornography on 8chan, Fredrick Brennan, 8chan site owner, doxxes them on Twitter
- @Lizzyf620 gets to publish a community post on Buzzfeed.
- January 13:
- Gamergate rejects responsibility of swatting @pixelgoth and lies the blame on members of GNAA that operate within /baphomet/. @pixelgoth herself speculates about elements within Gamergate using "the anonymity of 8chan / Gamergate for personal vendettas"
- The Washington Post reporter Caitlin Dewey publishes an article about the child pornography on 8chan and its raid board. /baphomet/ doxes her the same day.
- After The Fine Young Capitalists renewed the harassment of Veerender Jubbal at the turn of the year, Gamergate ramps it up by sending Jubbal obscene and racist material over Twitter.
- Tyler Wilde writes an op-ed for PC Gamer asking the video game community to drop the term "PC Master Race" from its vocabulary due to its Nazi connotations. Gamergate digs up that his girlfriend Anne Lewis works at Ubisoft as a communications associate and he had once reviewed Ubisoft games, but of course not while they were dating. Gamergate still forces PC Gamer to clarify its ethics policy in response, now officially forbidding Wilde from reviewing Ubisoft titles. They also complain when he deletes something from his personal Facebook concerning Ubisoft, but of course all his prior reviews are still up for anyone to see.
- January 14:
- /baphomet/ organizes a police raid at the house of Canadian Ashley Lynch whose crime is following someone on Twitter critical of Gamergate.
- After PC Gamer points out the Nazi terminology in the often-used "PC Master Race", Gamergate adopts fascist terminology as a new cause to defend.
- January 15: Gamergate gets covered by ABC Nightline, featuring interviews with Anita Sarkeesian, Brianna Wu, and Tim Schafer. The segment strongly focuses on the victims of Gamergate's harassment. Due to vocal outrage by Gamergate, the comments of the segment quickly turn into the usual mudslinging against Gamergate's opponents. Comments on the corresponding YouTube video get shut down. The producer of the segment gets accused of conspiracy by Gamergate on Twitter
- January 16:
- PCGamer updates its disclosure policy, after a member of its staff gets accused of collusion with an Ubisoft employee
- Shanley Kane partly doxxes Milo Yiannopoulos by publishing his phone number, he files a police report against her. The situation escalates further as Gamergate comes to Yiannopoulos' "defense" and doxxes Kane and her entire family.
- January 17:
- Boogie2988 comes around. Although not condemning the movement, he speaks openly of the harassment he received himself and expresses his sympathies for other Gamergate targets
- Dan Olson reveals that there were over 20 reports sent in to the RCMP's Integrated Child Exploitation Team due to his 8chan exposé. All charges are cleared as unfounded.
- January 19: Zoe Quinn and boyfriend Alex Lifschitz launch Crash Override Network, a resource and support network for victims of online harassment.
- January 20:
- Swatting victim Ashley Lynch clarifies the details of the event and summarizes the media response to the swatting incident.
- Shanley Kane responds in a brutally honest disclosure to the harassment that she received due to Milo Yiannopoulos' hit piece and Gamergate harassment.
- January 21:
- Gamergate targets the only woman on Wikipedia's Arbitratrion Committee because of "bias"
- Feminist activist group "Destroy the joint" starts a joint effort to disinvite actor and pro-Gamergate activist Adam Baldwin from an Australian convention. A petition is started to achieve this goal.
- The Fine Young Capitalists announce the #NotYourShield Project art sale to have "artists in developing countries" create posters of people who posted in #NotYourShield. Their proposal mocks and directly quotes both Jonathan McIntosh and Anita Sarkeesian, even seeing fit to twist Sarkeesian's statement to their own goals. A fun fact: they allow gender-based violence as submissions.
- January 22: Supporters of the petition against Adam Baldwin get doxxed, as Gamergate is furious about the move.
- January 23:
- For unknown reasons @Lizzyf620 gets doxxed on /baphomet/ and instantly becomes a target for harassment, despite attempts to contain the doxx. In the process, Lizzyf620 abandons Gamergate and deletes all of her social media accounts.
- Self-declared "Gamergate neutral" (read "definitely pro-Gamergate") news site Techraptor runs an article on Zoe Quinn and Alex Lifschitz's Crash Override Network. The header image is of a bag of shekels spilling out on top of a torah. No anti-semitism there that's for sure.
- January 24: While the petition against Adam Baldwin makes headlines, Gamergate attempts to falsify a counter-petition.
- January 29:
- #NotYourShield creator @j_millerworks attempts to dox himself on 8chan's /baphomet/ board. He is called out by mods, but Gamergate quickly forgives him.
- Wikipedia's Arbitration Committee passes its judgement in the ongoing edit war on the Gamergate article. Several Wikipedia editors who had resisted Gamergate's attempts to flood the article are banned or topic-banned, as well as several pro-Gamergate accounts. Gamergate celebrates by attempting to undo previously made changes by the banned editors and calls out for the banishment of more editors.
- January 30: "Jace Connors," who had already threatened Brianna Wu before, allegedly crashes his car on his way to her.
February 2015
- February 1: The owner of 8chan's /baphomet/ board is investigated by U.S. federal authorities, while still engaging in obstruction of justice, attempting to protect the perpetrators of the swatting of @pixelgoth.
- February 3:
- On Twitter a bot shows up, "naming and shaming" Gamergate supporters who voted for Brianna Wu's game "Revolution 60" on Steam Greenlight
- Pro-Gamergate journalist Alistair Pinsof shows up again, making several claims about corruption in gaming on pro-Gamergate site TechRaptor. Despite the attempt of Gamergate to spread this as news under the #PinsofInterview hashtag, Pinsof's claims are quickly debunked.
- February 7: Brianna Wu's life is threatened once again, this time by an associate of the man of the January 30 incident.
- February 9:
- After watchdog @Cernowatch gets in touch with 8chan's site owner, about Social Security Numbers and other obviously illegal content on /baphomet/, the board gets wiped. Among the illegal content was personal information of more than 40 police officers and the social security number of the federal judge who presided over the Silk Road criminal case. Despite the wipe of /baphomet/ its illegal content remains online on other sites.
- Liana Kerzner writes the first of a five part article series critical of Anita Sarkeesian for no discernable reason.
- February 11: NBC broadcasts Law & Order: SVU "Intimidation Game", an episode inspired by Gamergate and the harassment of its victims. While the reactions are mixed, yet Gamergate claims that the end of the show, depicting the retirement of a harassed, kidnapped and gang-raped game developer from the gaming industry, is a victory for the movement. This "victory" lasts a day until they watch the whole episode and begin complaining that gamers were shown in an unfair light.
- February 12: /baphomet/'s repository on the hidden TOR network which hosted stolen information gets seized by the FBI, U.S. Immigrations and Customs Enforcement, Europol, and Eurojust.
- February 13:
- Milo Yiannopoulos declares in an article titled "The Wacky World of Wu: The Tortured History of GamerGate’s Self-Styled Feminist Martyr" that "GamerGate is not a 'transphobic' movement, as you may have been misled to believe." He then spends the rest of the article deconstructing Brianna Wu's gender identity in a creepy amount of detail, followed by a comments section which is full of transphobes.
- (Side note: The article is not linked here as its wingnuttery is off the charts.)
- Bob Chipman, known as MovieBob, announces he has been fired from The Escapist; Gamergate claims this is because on October 12, 2014, he got into an argument on Twitter where he was not sympathetic to a Gamergate supporter having been harassed. However, Chipman himself claims that it had nothing to do with GamerGate.
- Milo Yiannopoulos declares in an article titled "The Wacky World of Wu: The Tortured History of GamerGate’s Self-Styled Feminist Martyr" that "GamerGate is not a 'transphobic' movement, as you may have been misled to believe." He then spends the rest of the article deconstructing Brianna Wu's gender identity in a creepy amount of detail, followed by a comments section which is full of transphobes.
- February 15: Mercedes Carrera comes out in support of a pornographic actress who was the victim of a home invasion robbery and rape a month earlier and had been identified a few days earlier by another website, planning on working with hers and TFYC's "The Porn Charity" to financially support her after the traumatizing experience. Carrera politicizes it for Gamergate by attacking Gamergate critics and Anita Sarkeesian in particular for perceived slights against sex workers. In talking with The Daily Dot, Carrera continues to attack Sarkeesian and Brianna Wu because they were only threatened with rape whereas the pornographic actress was actually raped, and goes on to accuse Sarkeesian and Wu of being professional victims.
- February 16: Disgraced MMO developer and former Red 5 CEO Mark Kern starts a petition blaming "a rift between gamers" on "the gaming press [...] accountable for conflagrating through a slew of articles that only served to fan the flames, celebrate the hate on both sides, magnify the rift and sensationalize the issue", while entirely ignoring any issues with Gamergate. Kern denies to be part of Gamergate, but wants to "contribute" to the movement.. The petition is welcomed by Gamergate and gets support by BioShock creator Ken Levine.
- February 20: Alexander Macris announces Brandon Morse and @Lizzyf620 have been hired as new writers at The Escapist.
- February 22: Alexander Macris announces that Liana Kerzner has been hired by The Escapist.
- February 23:
- Zak Sabbath, who produces and stars in the I Hit It With My Axe webseries of porn stars playing Dungeons & Dragons for The Escapist, announces he is leaving the site because Brandon Morse was hired.
- "Jace Connors" is revealed to be a character created by Maine comedian Jan Rankowski, who claims to have acted as Connors to "satirize 'the over-the-top, super-hyper-macho armed GamerGater'". Rankowski had actually crashed his car, but ad-libbed the video. Rankowski claims to be suffering from harassment by Gamergaters, while Wu plans on taking him to court as he was one of the reasons her company pulled out of the gaming convention PAX East.
- February 24: @pixelgoth releases a conversation she had with Alexander Macris months prior in which he admits he plans on using his position at Defy Media (owners of The Escapist) to push his pro-Gamergate standpoint.
March 2015
- March 2: The 2015 Game Developers Conference begins. Gamergate responds by disrupting their planned #GDC2015 hashtag with their usual vitriol. Usage of Randi Harper's auto-blocker by game devs at the event surges in response.
- March 3: Jordan Owen fires Davis Aurini from his position in working on their "film" The Sarkeesian Effect. Aurini claims his chumminess with Roosh V is to blame. A week of hilarity ensues.
- March 4:
- Zoe Quinn serves as part of a GDC panel discussing harassment on social media. Announces a partnership between Randi Harper's non-profit Online Abuse Prevention Initiative.
- Tim Schafer speaks at the GDC Awards ceremony, taking a jab at Gamergate by using a literal sockpuppet to talk about Gamergate his behalf. Because he references #NotYourShield in the bit, Gamergate claims he's racist and sexist for doing so. Starts #SayItToMyFaceTim as a hashtag, referencing yet another ancient meme.
- (Side note: The full bit can be viewed here)
- March 7:
- Gamergate targets a Google employee under the impression that he was responsible for the deletion of a tweet that unintentionally supported Gamergate, and was followed by an immediate retraction and apology that condemned Gamergate two days earlier.
- At the annual PAX East convention, an "Enforcer" (a volunteer for the event) live tweets his attempts to approach Brianna Wu, peppered with retweets of friends making rape jokes about his attempt. When he realized he was being noticed by critics of Gamergate, he claims he's "neutral" on the situation; multiple tweets promoting Gamergate are found in his timeline and his account was previously suspended for harassing Jonathan McIntosh, Anita Sarkeesian's collaborator on Feminist Frequency.
- @j_millerworks tweets a terrorist threat to PAX East; he later claims he was drunk.
- March 9: Blogger Zennistrad posts about how social scientists had come forward to say that Gamergate was negatively affecting academia's views on studying video games and that Gamergate was pleased with the result. One claimed that Gamergate set back the view of video games decades and the other, who goes by @8BitBecca, tried to archive video games (as with film archiving) and discovered that she would have likely been denied funding for her project had Gamergate happened the year before. Gamergate responds by doing their best to dox and harass her, leading her to shut down her social media.
- March 11: Sarah Nyberg writes about her experiences with Gamergate for Ravishly for the first time with her name rather than as @srhbutts
- March 12: Davis Aurini and Jordan Owen announce they have come to an agreement and will continue to work together on The Sarkeesian Effect.
- March 13: Chris Mancil, Director of Digital Communications for EA, writes that on February 15, after he had retweeted a comment made by Milo Yiannopoulos, he suffered a loss of nearly 2500 followers on Twitter. He attributes this to the Good Game AutoBlocker, calling his alleged inclusion on the list a "Scarlet Letter" and the act of the blocker creating a "tribal apartheid"; he also makes allusions to Israel and Palestine. He is unaware that the third-party tool that allows the Good Game AutoBlocker to work does not work on Twitter accounts the user intentionally follows, which means 2500 people manually unfollowed him.
- March 17: Twitter announces new rules that prohibit harassment by sending "large numbers of unsolicited @replies or mentions"; Randi Harper deduces this as the issues concerning sea-lioning.
- March 18: James Desborough announces his intent to sue Randi Harper over his inclusion in the list of users on the autoblocking tool she developed unless he is removed.
- March 22: For some inexplicable reason, Richard Dawkins is drawn into Gamergate because he discovers his listing on "The Block Bot" (different from Randi Harper's Good Game Auto Blocker) through Breitbart and the participation of many Gators to tell him Gamergate is about "ethics in video game journalism". Mark Kern reaches out to him. Dawkins demands a follower apologizes to Sargon of Akkad. Dawkins ultimately decides to remain "ignorant" of what Gamergate really is, but remains indignant over alleged libel.
- March 24:
- The moderator of 8chan's /gamergate/ board reveals he had been doxxed by TheRalphRetort and Araf, and ceases supporting the movement after the board is hacked. 8chan's Gator contingent moves back to the original board /gg/.
- Jeremiah True, a student at Reed College who has been in the press for having been banned from his class over disruptive discussions of rape culture, for some inexplicable reason aligns himself with Gamergate when he calls out Anita Sarkeesian in his 16-page essay on why he should be allowed back in the class. Not even Reason.com can make heads or tails of this guy's antics.
- Salon notices Milo Yiannopoulos's and others' attempts to dump video games for the culture war over progressivism in comic books with concerns over the titles Thor (now a woman), Captain America (now a black man), Ultimate Spider-Man (now a black/Latino biracial boy), Ms. Marvel (now a Turkish-American Muslim girl), and Batgirl (because a variant cover got pulled due to implications of rape).
- March 26: Brianna Wu reports that a Gamergate supporter tried to verbally hijack a panel she was participating in at Youngstown State University. Police barred him from reentering the room and investigated the bag he left behind as Wu has been sent threats concerning explosives in the past.
- March 29: A transphobic joke is discovered in Obsidian's Pillars of Eternity, having been submitted by one of the game's backers on Kickstarter. A member of the Obsidian development team is reached and agrees that the content should not have been added and the concern is amicably resolved. Unless you're Gamergate. The transgender woman who brought the content to light is harassed for having dared to say anything.
April 2015
- April 1: Zoe Quinn and Alex Lifschitz meet with Representative Katherine Clark to discuss Gamergate. Gamergaters attack all three by bombarding Rep. Clark with messages on Twitter and beginning an 8chan thread to discuss how the free and not asking for donations Crash Override Network is a scam.
- April 2:
- David Draiman comments on his recent feud with comedian Trevor Noah,[wp] who has recently been tapped to replace Jon Stewart as host of The Daily Show. Draiman found several of Noah's old tweets anti-Semitic in nature, and in his Twitter discussions sought out support from his Gamergate followers to take a stand against anti-Semitism. Instead, he was assaulted by anti-Semitism and blocked and reported by his count more than 250 followers for their anti-Semitic statements.
- The "IMO: Crash Network Override" article on Techraptor is discovered by Izzy Galvez, Zoe Quinn, and Alex Lifschitz. Observers contact the official TechRaptor Twitter account whose operator denies culpability and uses their "Hebrew" heritage as a shield, while also admitting they cannot read the text in question. Another observer discovers that it the image is the first result in Google for "thirty pieces of silver", the price Judas Iscariot was paid to betray Jesus as written in the Gospel of Matthew.
- Randi Harper is subject to a swatting attempt.
- April 4: The Hugo Awards[wp] nominees are announced and a group of politically conservative sci-fi writers come out on top, revealed to be the result of gaming the vote by pushing Brad R. Torgersen and Larry Correia's "Sad Puppies" slate for the third year in a row and Gamergate supporter Theodore Beale's (Vox Day) "Rabid Puppies" slate (which actually gets more votes); Gamergate supporter "Daddy Warpig" actively recruits people in Gamergate to "humble SJW in Sci-Fi, too". The following week, George R. R. Martin[wp] opines that "the Sad Puppies [and Beale] have broken the Hugo Awards" beyond redemption; he also writes how he fears the groups "are beyond the pale, raging and ranting about SJWs and cliques and secret conspiracies."
- April 6: For some reason /r/KotakuInAction decides Reddit's interim CEO Ellen Pao[wp] has to do with their goals of "ethics in video game journalism" after all of the news concerning her pro-diversity hiring practices and her loss in her lawsuit against former employer Kleiner Perkins[wp] goes around. For this reason, they decide to organize a boycott of buying Reddit Gold memberships for themselves or others. The original post and several subsequent posts by the proposer are gilded in response. Later, /r/EllenPaoInAction is formed by this set.
- April 12: Anita Sarkeesian went to a board game parlor in Columbus, Ohio, and later discovered Ben, a collaborator of TheAmazingAtheist and operator of their Drunken Peasants Twitter account, took her photograph without her permission and posted it. Gamergate comes out to support Ben, for obvious reasons.
- April 14: Running With Scissors' Postal 2[wp] receives downloadable content 12 years after its initial release. Milo Yiannopoulos has been included, with his blessing as an Easter Egg that turns all NPCs into him, and he can of course be killed.
- April 15: Zoe Quinn speaks at a congressional briefing on cyberstalking. The panel decides to start the #StopWebH8 hashtag to begin discussion on the dangers of cyberstalking and harassment over the Internet. Gamergate supporters disrupt it in their usual ways.
- April 17: On the second day of the Calgary Comic & Entertainment Expo, attendees discover a booth run by the "Honey Badger Brigade" having a banner with Gamergate propaganda on it as well as posters of Vivian James. In addition, there were reports that the group had disrupted a panel with feminist topics the night before. After the booth is removed and its representatives asked to leave and not participate in future events, The Mary Sue uncovers the truth behind the "Honey Badger Brigade". The group is actually Honey Badger Radio, the official feMRA podcast for A Voice For Men, made up AVfM writers Karen Straughan, Alison Tieman, Hannah Wallen, Mike Stephenson, and Sage Gerard. They crowdfunded their way into the convention for the sole purpose of disrupting it, even using Tieman's webcomic as a front for their true intentions. An attendee gave The Mary Sue a report of the group's disruption of the Women Into Comics panel on the night of the 16th. So, because of the Honey Badgers' intentional disruption, harassment of attendees, and the fact they lied in order to even get a booth in the first place, all violations of the contract they signed with Calgary Expo, they run to Gamergate and the MRAs crying of censorship and misogyny (as they're feMRAs of all things) and #ExpoGate is born, once again showing that Gamergate will stand up for unethical behavior so long as it benefits them.
- April 21: The documentary GameLoading: Rise of the Indies is released on Steam. Gamergate goes after it when they learn Zoe Quinn was interviewed for it.