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The DeanBeat: A tragic but almost necessary meltdown for the game industry

  • Posted byby Dean Takahashi
  • Updated
  • 5 min

It was a tragic week for the industry. Women in the game industry, fed up with sexual assault, rape, and abuse, named a half-dozen men in the game industry as their abusers. One of the alleged perpetrators, Night in the Woods co-creator Alex Holowka, died, reportedly by suicide, after fellow game developer Zoë Quinn accused him.

Those sad events in turned caused an eruption of finger-pointing on social media that still hasn’t died down. Those who supported the men being named said their lives were being ruined with hearsay, and the women who accused them said they were not letting the transgressions go unchallenged and were speaking out to stop the men from ruining the lives of other victims.

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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.