[uvTwitch]

That's one way to tell the story. Here's another:

Zoe's disgruntled ex-partner decided to publicly air a lot of dirty laundry after he'd discovered she'd been unfaithful to him. This is childish behavior, but the thing that caught people's attention was his claim that she'd intentionally slept with the editors of gaming publications to receive positive coverage, which turned out to be true.

Caught with their pants down, instead of doing the decent thing and apologizing, the editors in question rallied their friends, and published articles decrying gamers as woman-hating children, and declaring that they were 'dead' and 'over' - essentially, insulting their audience for daring to accuse them of poor ethics.

This was understandably offensive to previously loyal readers, being attacked because of their hobbies, and so the movement was born - coined #gamergate by Adam Baldwin, but helmed by none.

Images like that banner were created as a response to the repeated attempts to discredit the movement as nothing more than a woman-hatting harassment campaign, as was the sister hashtag #notyourshield, in which plenty of minorities of all genders showed their support, and disproved the claims that it was just a bunch of hateful white men.

re: your links. Gawker Media are well known as having a vested interest in painting gamergate as a hate movement; their site Kotaku plays host to one of the accused PR-for-sex journalists, they have posted numerous attack pieces, and in return have had several of their sponsors pull out due to gamergater's emails. They are desperate to paint gamergate as a hate campaign, because they badly want it to go away and stop hurting their revenue.

Gamergaters generally want people to stop focusing on women's sex lives, and pay more attention to the actions and lack of integrity of the journalists involved.

[modfodder]

It's not true that she slept with editors to receive positive coverage. The ONE writer she became involved with did not write any reviews of her game and the only article he did write was written before they became an item.

The fact that you choose to lie about this fact shows that you are perfectly happy with your role as a cog in the harassment campaign. Gamergate is a hate campaign that you are participating in.

As for the #gamergate hashtag, after its first use by Adam it was quickly taken over by several people on 4-chan to attack Zoe, so it was helmed by someone. see http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2014/09/new-chat-logs-show-how...

in a response below you state: "it was about the journalists who had accepted sex, and reciprocated with positive coverage." Yet there has never been any proof of this, because it didn't happen. She started a relationship with a writer and received no positive coverage from it. You continue to state lies that have been proven false.

[uvTwitch]

She herself stated that it was her reason for sleeping with them, in the video-capped facebook chatlogs her ex posted. That was enough evidence for me to believe the claims.

Her actions aren't important, however. Gamergate the movement generally wants people to stop focusing on women's sex lives, and pay more attention to the actions of the journalists involved.

You're quite quick to accuse me of harassment and hate. That a hashtag was hijacked hardly discredits it's original intent. Those hijackers, and any since, have quickly been condemned by people who simply want journalists to have integrity and ethical standards.

If the websites had simply stated that yes, having a conflict of interest with the subjects we write about is poor ethical behavior and we will do things to change this, the campaign wouldn't have taken off at all. Instead of simply addressing gamergate's legitimate complaints, they are still trying to discredit the movement, which serves only to fuel the fire, and ironically, destroy their ad revenue due to sponsors pulling out.

[modfodder]

How about pointing me (and the others reading this thread) towards the chat logs where she admits to sleeping with journalists in exchange for positive reviews.

The hashtags original intent existed for only a short period of time. It's like saying we shouldn't call Hitler a murderous dictator because he was so sweet and friendly as a child.

[uvTwitch]

The only reason I viewed them in the first place was because they were readily available at the time, and because I wanted to confirm for myself if the claims being made were true.

I don't want to go digging for other people's private relationship drama to share it here in order to prove a point, and if you think this discredits my position, then so be it.

[modfodder]

I went digging for them and found nothing that was even close to an admission of trading sex for positive coverage, so yeah, your lack of proof discredits your position.

[BryantD]

"the thing that caught people's attention was his claim that she'd intentionally slept with the editors of gaming publications to receive positive coverage, which turned out to be true."

No, this is not true. Here are the ways in which it isn't true:

- You're claiming that Zoe Quinn slept with people for the purpose of positive coverage (as opposed to, say, pleasure). There's no evidence of this.

- She didn't sleep with "editors of gaming publications." Of the three people named in the blog post, only one is a journalist and none are editors.

- Zoe's ex-partner didn't accuse her of sleeping with people for positive coverage; in fact, he explicitly says "if there was any conflict of interest between Zoe and [journalist] regarding coverage of Depression Quest prior to April, I have no evidence to imply that it was sexual in nature."

- [Journalist] wrote one article that talked about Zoe Quinn at all; it was not a review. It does say nice things about her. He wasn't sleeping with her at the time.

I don't have much hope of this, but seriously: you should stop and think about why you've come to believe this skewed, angry version of the story. What are you getting out of thinking Zoe Quinn is this bad a person? Could you be wrong about the rest of your beliefs about Gamergate?

[uvTwitch]

The video-capped facebook chatlogs and her own admissions were evidence enough for me.

However, she is not important.

What is important is the poor behaviour of the journalists. That is what the focus is, that is what's been called into question, that is what people are angry about.

The only people still talking about women's sex lives are the anti-gamergate crowd, trying to smear the movement.

[ioquake3]

This is absolutely false. There was no coverage that was slanted for her free game after she supposedly slept with anyone. This is not about ethics, if it were that would have been an issue when BIG publishers started paying youtubers to cover games without any negative language. Or any of the other actual scandals. Not when ONE indie game developer happened to have some dirty laundry aired by an asshole.

[mkal_tsr]

You mean like when TotalBiscuit called out Shadows of Mordor and then Boogie reported that publishers are changing their contracts?

[acdha]

Notice how quickly the #gamergate contingent dropped that to go back to talking how Anita/Zoe/Brianna totally deserved it and how gamers are being oppressed by a vast SJW conspiracy?

This is not what a real campaign to improve journalistic ethics looks like.

[imanaccount247]

No, I haven't noticed that. In fact, discussion of anita and zoe is banned on most gamergate forums because of throwaway accounts being made to try to stir up shit about them. What I have noticed is their campaigns to get advertisers to pull ad campaigns from corrupt websites. Looks like a real campaign to improve journalistic ethics to me.

[mkal_tsr]

Can you name me everyone in the "#gamergate contingent" as well as all tweets between the time SoM issue was announced and when Boogie mentioned the "resolution" (in the name of contract changes). I recommend pastebin for large lists.

If not, I would ask ... why has this -> gamergateharassment.tumblr.com [1] <- not been reported by the same journalists that say they are ethical and that GamerGate is only a harassment campaign.

Also, I think things get a bit more messy when the same journalists involved in the issue use their parent companies to shield themselves from criticism. Unless you forgot that time that P.H. smeared Stardock and Cards against Humanity on flimsy "evidence" and then when the same level of evidence comes up about someone else, it's deemed irrelevant. Here I thought being ethical was applying equal standards to people, guess I was wrong.

So, in that case, please explain why Grayson did not need to mention his relationships, or why the Wizardchan harassment was never clarified in a new article (to correct offending publications), or why allegations against Wardell and Tempkin were published (multiple times) as "relevant to the industry" whereas another developer is not.

Where is the exact line? Please fully describe the line in detail so all reading this comment thread can clearly see Grayson, Hernandez, Kotaku et al have not violated any ethics standards and treat all stories and persons equally, and they have not contributed to harassment.

[1] http://gamergateharassment.tumblr.com/

[uvTwitch]

The admission she herself made, as well as the video-captured facebook conversation logs her ex posted with her where she admitted as much, was evidence enough for me.

The scandal wasn't about her though, try as the media might to make her the focus - it was about the journalists who had accepted sex, and reciprocated with positive coverage. It was also about the many other journalists who were found to have been doing similar things - patricia hernandez, writing a multitude of articles about the games of her housemate; danielle rindau, giving Gone Home a 10/10, when she had a pre-existing friendship with the developers, to name two.

It's the behavior of the journalists which is what's being criticized.

Gamergaters generally wants people to stop focusing on women's sex lives.

[modfodder]

If you won't point to the Facebook conversation/logs where she supposedly admitted to exchanging sexual favors for favorable coverage, at least point us toward all these stories by the journalists she slept with. That would help, a list of all the journalists that you know accepted sexual favors to provide positive coverage. With that list, please provide links to the positive coverage they wrote for those game developers they slept with.

And please point us towards all the death threats that the journalists received for writing these articles.

And you say that gamergaters generally want to stop focusing on women's sex lives, but you continue to bring it up without providing any proof what so ever.

[mkal_tsr]

I will never forget when a Gawker employee (Gizmodo, brand under Gawker) used an on/off device for TVs in the middle of a tech demo at CES 2008 [1]. Gawker showed their true colors then.

They have not changed since, only gotten worse.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gizmodo#TV-B-Gone

Edit: I'm getting downvoted. Please explain where I am factually incorrect, either in what I have said or linked. Thanks :-)

[kaonashi]

Sounds like a lot of female sexuality policing to me. I'd be ashamed to have my name anywhere near it.

[uvTwitch]

It has nothing to do with her actions - the complaints are aimed at the journalists who accepted sex in exchange for coverage, as well as the numerous other journalists who have demonstrably low integrity and poor ethics.

[kaonashi]

Really? Where are these reviews?

[acdha]

> This is childish behavior, but the thing that caught people's attention was his claim that she'd intentionally slept with the editors of gaming publications to receive positive coverage, which turned out to be true. > … more tedious historical revisionism …

You couldn't even make it one sentence in without repeating a trivially disproven lie about Zoe Quinn – how exactly is that supposed to convince anyone that you're concerned with ethics instead of harassment?

[uvTwitch]

I wanted to verify for myself that said claims were true, and video-capped facebook chatlogs where she admits her intent are pretty hard to convincingly fake.

She's not the issue, though. The journalists who accepted such favors in exchange are the issue.

Why are you trying to focus on a woman's sex life instead of the journalist's poor ethical behavior?