Thread by @Gaohmee

It's fucking unbelievable that making games under capitalism means people can just buy the right to abuse us for 20-60 dollars just because they play our games.

I don't know why I thought I could tweet this and walk away and expect to not come back to my mentions full of abuse...

Everyone in the replies to this - well meaning or not - who is "well actually"-ing me about how that's not unique to games: Get the hell away from me.
The scale of the abuse we face, how our families get threatened and how it does not stop at 5 pm - THAT is the difference.

Just.... get the hell away from me with that useless whataboutism. Yes, retail workers receive abuse too, but our player bases find our social media accounts, our home addresses, our families to send death threats to. Just sit down and listen for once.

I have friends in this industry on Twitter who can't even reply to my damn cat pictures without having players of their game in the replies to that tweet call them names.
Imagine literally having nowhere to go without people abusing you in your communities.

I have all the respect in the world for retail workers, but don't come at me with this comparison. No retail worker has thousands of people online trying to doxx them and their families. It simply isn't the same thing.

And the people in my replies calling hacking and doxxing of game companies and gamedevs "direct action" as if they were activists? Fuck you. You know absolutely nothing about activism. And this is coming from a hardcore anarchist who doesn't give a rats ass about corporations.

I can not find it right now but I saved a Twitter exchange of a dev who was tweeting about taking a break because of a death in his family with players replying to him to yell at him about his game and like... tell me how you want to justify this. Any of this. How?

I don't know if any other gamedev feels this way, but this stuff literally impacts how I make friends and form new relationships? Like... "Hi, I'm Jenny, do you wanna be friends and endure that every now and again you'll see me go through receiving death threats?"

Trying to explain ANY of this to ANYONE new in your life is making you look like a fucking maniac, ESPECIALLY when it comes to dating. "Hi, are you ready to potentially be doxxed and harassed because of MY job? Wanna get a coffee sometime?"
No really. This is a thing.

I just.... do any other devs ever dream about what wonderful things we could make if we didn't have to deal with all this? The energy we'd have to create even more wonderful things?

Anyways. This rant was brought to you by 10 years of gamedev abuse. Sorry for getting so raw.
Let me know if you're not scared of getting a coffee despite all this I guess?