The DeanBeat: Farewell to #Gamergate

The #Gamergate controversy began in August 2014, when a former boyfriend of game developer Zoë Quinn shared a long post about their relationship, one that included a description of an affair she allegedly had with a video game journalist. The false accusation that she traded sex for favorable game coverage spread far and wide on the Internet, and it stirred up a long period of harassment against her, including “doxing,” or publicly sharing her address, phone number, and other private documents, as well as death threats and rape threats.

It might have ended there, as it seemed like nothing more than an outburst from a relationship gone wrong. But the Internet hate mob latched onto it. It escalated into a culture war about what games are and who plays them — even if it was built on a lie — and it created downstream effects for the entire game industry. Quinn briefly brought it all back into the news this week as she announced that she had withdrawn her harassment case against developer Eron Gjoni after “a really, really long two years.”