The Game and Online Harassment Hotline starts this week.
The Game and Online Harassment Hotline starts this week.
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Why Anita Sarkeesian started the Game and Online Harassment Hotline

  • Posted byby Dean Takahashi
  • Updated
  • 17 min

The video game industry exploded this summer with the #MeToo movement and allegations of sexual harassment and abuse. It added another layer of hardship on a year with Black Lives Matter protests and the pandemic, and it caused a lot of stress for both game developers and gamers.

That’s one reason for the urgency behind the Games and Online Harassment Hotline, which opens today. This free, nonprofit service comes from Anita Sarkeesian, the head of the Feminist Frequency who started a movement to expose sexism in games with the firebrand videos dubbed Tropes vs Women in Video Games. That work earned her an Ambassador Award from the Game Developers Choice Awards, as well as a lot of harassment on social media.

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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.