Kate Edwards, left, is a big cosplayer fan.
Kate Edwards, left, is a big cosplayer fan.
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Kate Edwards: Still outspoken, from ArenaNet to video game unionization

  • Posted byby Dean Takahashi
  • Updated
  • 21 min

Kate Edwards was very outspoken as the executive director of the International Game Developers Association. After five years in that job, she left in June 2017. And she’s still outspoken.

In fact, Edwards can talk about more issues now than she could while she worked for the IGDA, which represents the interests of game developers and now counts Jen MacLean as its leader. While at the IGDA, Edwards spoke out against Gamergate, the angry gamer movement, at great personal risk, and she documented crunch time, or forcing developers to work unpaid overtime, in the game industry.

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Written by

Dean Takahashi

Dean Takahashi is editorial director for GamesBeat. He has been a tech journalist since 1988, and he has covered games as a beat since 1996. He was lead writer for GamesBeat at VentureBeat from 2008 to April 2025. Prior to that, he wrote for the San Jose Mercury News, the Red Herring, the Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times, and the Dallas Times-Herald. He is the author of two books, "Opening the Xbox" and "The Xbox 360 Uncloaked." He organizes the annual GamesBeat Next, GamesBeat Summit and GamesBeat Insider Series: Hollywood and Games conferences and is a frequent speaker at gaming and tech events. He lives in the San Francisco Bay Area.