Timeline/September

01 Sep 2014



 * Youtuber gamer Chris Ray releases a video on "Gamers are Dead" attack articles, and how gamers own media is re-stigmatizing gaming and are undoing the progress video games had made in being accepted by a wider audience, all in an effort to deflect from concerns over their own ethical issues.


 * Milo Yiannopoulos, Associate Editor at Breitbart London, publishes one of the first GamerGate articles from the mainstream media which covers how games journalists have attacked the gaming community. In the article, Milo describes how the games press "rounded on its own readers, accusing them of bigotry and misogyny" and how the gaming community was "sick of being lectured to... by hypocrites and liars.". Yiannopoulos would later reveal the existence of the GameJournoPros secret email list.


 * A new pro-gamer website, GoodGamers.us promising to uphold ethical journalistic standards is announced:


 * Operation Disrespectful Nod is launched on Github. Operation Disrespectful Nod is an email campaign to cut off ad revenue from anti-gamer journalists by contacting their advertisers.


 * The UK newspaper The Guardian publishes an article attacking the games industry for having "a culture of hate and suspicion". The article focuses on Zoe Quinn and Anita Sarkeesian involved and dismisses gamers' concerns about corruption in games journalism.


 * The author of the Guardian piece, Jenn Frank is revealed to have had an undisclosed conflicts of interest, having been funded on Patreon by Silverstring Media PR agent Maya Kramer. Anita Sarkeesian and Johnathan McIntosh of Feminist Frequency are also both advisors to Kramer's company Silverstring.


 * A Youtube video is released by investigator CameraLady, detailing several corporate and clique connections in the indie games scene, centered on Silverstring Media, and the prestigious Independent Games Festival (IGF) awards. Questions are raised about the fairness of the IGF games judging process.


 * A pastebin of a deleted google doc, giving an example of how the academic organisation DiGRA is seeking to promote the inclusion of Identity Politics into video games. DiGRA is also connected to PR firm Silverstring Media.

02 Sep 2014



 * Czech game developer Daniel Vavra, designer of the Mafia series, makes a series of tweets saying that game developers "scared to write about the real subject" of #Gamergate, for fear that the poweful games media will no longer cover their games in retaliation, saying that "This is how few can terrorize many." He says that he will place his career on the line to speak about the real issues.


 * Independent games website GamesNosh publishes an article by a female gamer on #Gamergate, on how the issues of transparancey in games journalism and indie dev favouritismare being buried in Gender issue. The article also notes how the media is systematically ignoring female gamers supporting #Gamergate.


 * Totalbiscuit's makes a light-hearted satirical parody on pretentious indie devs (warning: (poor) singing).


 * The Guardian edits their previous article with a partial disclaimer stating the author financially supported Quinn's game. The update omits that the author had been financially supported by Maya Kramer of Silverstring.


 * The BBC technology desk publishes an article on the scandal, focusing exclusively on the tweets sent to Antia Sarkeesian and a narrative of misogyny in video games. The BBC's technology desk, assigned to cover the scandal, would consistently refuse to cover the problems of corruption in games journalism or address the viewpoints of gamers throughout its coverage in the coming months.

03 Sep 2014



 * Ninouh90 creates the NotYourShield hashtag, in which minorities and women call for games journalists to stop using accusations of misogyny and racism to deflect discussion of corruption in the industry. The hashtag gives a voice to female and minority gamers who don't want to be used as an excuse for social justice lobbies to push political agendas onto gamers.


 * Youtuber EventStatus releases a video "The Outright Hypocrisy, Manipulation & Disrespect of Consumers by Media", outlining the ugly attacks and stereotyping of gamers by journalists, and the lack of coverage of this by the media.


 * Youtuber MundaneMatt releases a video criticizing recent assertions that gamers are "like nazis"


 * Youtuber Boogie2988 releases a video disputing the gaming media's assertion that Gamers are misogynist or racist.


 * Game developer Ben Quintero is "downgraded" on Gamasutra after writing a blog post on the site calling for reconsiliation between gamers and game journalists.


 * Al Jazeera publish an article on Gamergate.

04 Sep 2014



 * TakuChat publish an article outlining how indie game developers Paul Hubans and Jennifer Dawe have been ostracized for stepping out of line in the indie game scene. Huban's lost connections for retweeting a recent video about corruption in the IGF, and Dawe had been attacked for disagreeing with Zoe Quinn in the past.


 * David Auerbach from Slate magazine publishes an article stating that “Gaming Journalism Is Over." Auerbach describes how traditional games journalists were faced with a dwindling reader base due to popular YouTubers such as PewDiePie and that they were basically "rage-quitting their meal ticket" by attacking their remaining audience.


 * Gearbox employee Anthony Burch openly reveals that his former coworkers at Destructoid gave Borderlands 2 favorable reviews due to his personal connections.


 * Matt Rappard of TFYC appears on Honey Badger Radio discussing the Scandal and surrounding problems in the games industry.


 * Adam Baldwin and the Internet Aristocrat appear on the Ed Morrissey Show to give an overview of and discuss the scandal

05 Sep 2014



 * Ashton Liu, contributing Editor to RPGFan.com, publishes blog post "Gamers Are Not Dead, They Just Leveled Up", outlining several scandals, and decrying the behavior of major games websites as extremist and reprehensible, as well as their silencing and censorship of dissent. He admits that by doing so he has "gone rogue" from the mainstream game journalism clique.


 * Wikipedia entry on #GamerGate is created. Groups such as Wiki_ProjectFeminism band together in an edit war to paint the movement as sexist and misogynist. At its peak, #GamerGate's Wikipedia entry had over 300 edits in a 3 day timespan from WikiProject Feminism. As of 27 Sep 2014, #GamerGate was still the most edited article in the WikiProject Feminism group, with 53 edits being made over 3 days.
 * Kotaku editor Stephen Totilo writes an article on Gamergate, in which he states that his journalists are entitled to pay into developer's Patreon funds in order to gain access, and expense this cost.

06 Sep 2014



 * Zoe Quinn publishes a series of tweets containing excerpts from 4chan threads and the #burgersandfries IRC channel, alleging that #Gamergate was a planned "raid".


 * A twitter account spams illegal pornography at the Feminist frequency twitter account. 4chan users quickly report the offending account for abuse.


 * The LA Times prints an anti-gamer article in the vein of the earlier "Gamers are Dead" pieces in the games media


 * MundaneMatt post a video response saying #Gamergate supporters are not responsible for the tweets to feminist frequency


 * Gamergate and related hashtags continue to trend on twitter.


 * Alexander "Archon" Macris of The Escapist enters the #burgersandfries IRC channel to ask a set of questions about recent events, and receives responses from users in the channel rebutting several of the claims being made against #Gamergate.
 * MundaneMatt releases a video response to Quinn's tweets, explaining that #burgerandfries is a public IRC channel for discussion and updates of the emerging scandal.

07 Sep 2014

 * @Cainjw publishes an extensive analysis of the early timeline of Gamergate, rebutting Zoe Quinn's claims that there was harassment conspiracy by #4chan.


 * A team of gamers investigating the leaked Polytron data from August releases a video outlining conflicts of interest at the Independent Games Festival (IGF), and the IndieCade game awards, centered around the the investment group Indie Fund. Indie Fund and Polytron investors are revealed to have been judges in the 2012 IGF awards, at which Polytron's "Fez" won the Grand Prize, while also entitled to a percentage of the game's sales upon its release the following month. The awards chair of IndieCade, at which Fez also won 2 awards, is also revealed to have been a Polytron investor. (Gamesnosh Article on video )


 * Gamesnosh publish an Op-Ed on "The Long, Sad and Drawn out Death of the Games “Journalist”, covering the historical, cultural and economic reasons for the profession's decline


 * Philip Wythe publishes a Daily Targum article, outlining the problems of harassment and abuse within social justice communities and how they have silenced and impeded discussion around recent events in gaming.


 * Gamasutra writer Greg Costikyan responds to #GamerGate by stating that good men defend women, saying that "To defend the honour of Anita Sarkeesian, Zoe Quinn, Leigh Alexander, or yes, Anna Anthropy, I will be willing to meet any of you, on horse or afoot, with sword or pistol, at a time and place of your choosing."


 * In a former Reddit mod XavierMendel describes the internal politics between Reddit mods and admins and the circumstances behind the 32,000 comments deleted in a thread on r/gaming during August. The interview describes Reddit's admins and moderators having a social environment similar to a collection of high school cliques with radical groups such as /r/SRS given disproportionate amounts of power relative to their size and behavior. XavierMendel also states that he started developing a reddit plugin which could encrypt PMs and subreddits, but ceased development after reddit admins threatened to accuse him of aiding and abetting in the distribution of child porn if he continued. (IndieJuice Article )

08 Sep 2014



 * The Escapist magazine releases a Publisher's note on the state of gaming, addressing the recent fallout from the "Gamers are Dead" articles in August. The note also discusses the meaning of the gamer identity, the current state of the games industry, and game journalism. Also published is a set revised ethical standards for content across all of Defy Media, addressing concerns raised during recent events.


 * Tyler Malka, owner of the forum NeoGaf, tweets that #GamerGate is being kept afloat by “200 nonspecifically disenfranchised manchildren.


 * Rock Paper Shotgun publishes a long article giving their response to recent the concerns raised in recent weeks, stating that the evidence appears to point towards a "conspiracy of misogynists to silence progressive writers". RPS also affirms that it will continue its stance on game criticism, stating that "But if you talk about games, you talk about politics."


 * TechRaptor tweets that their website database was hacked and they have lost several days of data. It is the latest in a series of attacks on the website following its coverage of the scandal to date.


 * Two gamers editing the emerging Wikipedia gamergate article are doxxed by a "social justice" blogger in an extensive blogpost. Zoe Quinn makes a tweet about the blogpost

09 Sep 2014

 * A confirmed former games journalist makes a post in the /r/Games subreddit detailing corruption in the Australian gaming press. The source states that unprofessionally close relationships between Australian game publishers and game journalists motivated them to kill a story after a security breach resulted in over 40,000 user accounts getting compromised by hackers . EA would later confirm that the incident occurred at the community forum for developer Firemonkeys on Sep 8th, 2013.


 * As a result of gamers consumer emails, one of the "Gamers are Dead" sites, Polygon is reported to have lost an advertising sponsor. Another sponsor, Stacksocial is alleged to have pulled ads from Kotaku polygon


 * APGNation publishes an interview with Matthew Rappard of The Fine Young Capitalists, on the difficulties that TFYC's feminist game jam faced due to opposition from Zoe Quinn throughout 2014, as well as their recent interactions and difficulties over the course of the current scandal.


 * Youtuber TotalBiscuit release a 30 minute video discussing recent developments in games media industry and the principles of gaming media


 * A large number of articles painting #GamerGate as a misogynistic movement created by conspiring 4chan users are published over a 24 hour period, including in the Telegraph and Der Spiegal


 * The Taiwan electronics newspaper DigiTimes, publishes a commentary arguing that "Time is running out for console makers to clean up GamerGate", and that the demonization of gamers and other negative press could impact fourth quarter holiday sales of video games and consoles.

10 Sep 2014

 * Game Journalist Jason Schreier writes twitlonger giving reasons for why the story of TFYC and their game jam's difficulties are not being reported on Kotaku.


 * During a discussion on Gamergate during the Rooster Teeth, Patch podcast, machinima filmmaker Burnie Burns comments that "the language and vernacular of gamers is winning or losing" and also "cheating" and that gamers will react if they believe the system is being cheated.


 * Amid increasing censorship of Gamergate discussion on websites, the forum Gamergate.community forum is founded.


 * Japanese twitter users begin to tweet about the #Gamergate and #NotYourShield hashtags


 * A very detailed pastebin emerges outlining the many connections among a clique centered around the PR company Silverstring media, involving game journalists, indie developers, PR contacts, and academics.

11 Sep 2014

 * The Fine Young Capitalists $65,000 IndieGoGo campaign is successfully funded with the help of donations from gamers on 4chan and other websites (despite being banned from NeoGAF ).


 * Youtuber and games journalist George Wiedman, aka "Super Bunnyhop", releases a long video on Gamergate, discussing the issues surrounding relationships between journalists and their sources. The video includes an interview with Georgia State University Professor Greg Lisby on ethics in journalism, and an email interview with retired New York Times journalist Mitch Keller.


 * The website Goodgamers.us is launched


 * A game developer from New Zealand post on KotakuInAction saying that Gamergate has been a long time coming, and that many developers have been the targets of industry bullying at the hands of social justice cliques


 * Milo Yiannopoulos makes a thread on 4chan that reaches 2660 replies and 795 images.

12 Sep 2014

 * TechRaptor releases an article of an interview conducted with Daniel Vavra, co-founder of Warhorse Studios and supporter of GamerGate.

14 Sep 2014

 * Leigh Alexander of Gamasutra appears at XOXO Fest and admits to promoting an agenda in her articles.

15 Sep 2014

 * Wikileaks tweets support for #GamerGate.

16 Sep 2014

 * A 4chan moderator demands that users stop posting a Cracked article written by Zoe Quinn and starts banning anyone who mentions it. /v/ explodes, and the mod responds by stating that the bans were a violation of the "no commercial spam" rule. All relevant threads and all subsequent #GamerGate threads are deleted.
 * Feminist Christina Hoff Sommers publishes a video denouncing recent attacks on gamers.
 * Prominent skeptic Richard Dawkins tweets support for Christina H. Sommers and states "We don't let religion pass myth off as fact. Feminism should be no different." Dawkins refers to Sommers' attackers as the "Big Sister is Watching You Thought Police."

17 Sep 2014

 * Milo Yiannopoulos reveals the presence of a secret games journalist mailing list called GameJournoPros which secretly communicates outside of the public eye in order to control the narrative in the gaming industry. The group consists of 150 figures in the games industry from various different sites.
 * Rooster Teeth podcast video posted to Youtube explaining how award shows are rigged and influenced by cronyism.
 * NicheGamer releases an article of an interview they had with an anonymous Xbox developer who supports GamerGate.

18 Sep 2014

 * Chris Poole aka. moot returns to 4chan after attending the XOXO fest in Portland, OR. moot releases a statement that #GamerGate threads are being deleted from 4chan because "they violate our blanket 'no personal information / raids / calls to invasion". 4chan users report that multiple threads about corruption in gaming journalism are being deleted from /v/, /pol/, and even /b/. The 4chan userbase splits, with many members leaving for 8chan.
 * Milo Yiannopoulos releases additional email chains from the GameJournoPros group. Contents of the leaked emails include game journalists joking about sleeping with PR and developers, banding together to purchase a "feel better" gift for Zoe Quinn, and taking turns calling Eron Gjoni a psychopath.
 * Video game critic Liana K jokes at a conference about inflating the scores of games that deserve a 7.5/10.0 to an 8.0/10.0 so the game developers do not get penalized by Metacritic averages, as a way of calling attention to the harmful influence that Metacritic has in the industry. Despite suggestions to the contrary, there is no evidence of Liana actually manipulating her scores, and she has strongly denied the accusation
 * NicheGamer releases an article of interviews they had with anonymous, named and aspiring developers. The article also includes an interview with the creator of the NotYourShield hashtag, Jason Miller.

19 Sep 2014

 * Milo Yiannopoulos is mailed a large package of toilet paper to his home address.
 * Milo Yiannopoulos releases transcripts from GameJournoPros in which James Fudge, the managing editor of GamePolitics.com and Ben Kuchera, opinion editor at Polygon.com, pressure Greg Tito, the editor in chief of Escapistmagazine.com to delete a forum thread about Zoe Quinn and corruption in the gaming industry.
 * Reddit admins add a new feature which would allow moderators to collapse all a deleted or removed comment and its replies. Users are still able to uncollapse the comment if they can find it.
 * Matt Rappard from TFYC reports another hacking attempt on their account.
 * Adland.tv speculates that the Gamers are Dead attack will shrink the overall advertising budget for games journalism as an industry
 * TechRaptor interviews an anonymous Xbox One developer who sheds some light on corruption in the gaming journalism industry.

20 Sep 2014

 * The Escapist is temporarily taken down due to a DDOS attack on the primary GamerGate thread on their forum.
 * All activity related to GamerGate is banned from the TVTropes forums.
 * The Ralph Retort reports that in 2011, Neogaf sold user content to Kotaku without the permission of the user. The source chose to remain anonymous due to the damage that could be caused if he/she went public.

21 Sep 2014

 * Milo Yiannopoulos is mailed a syringe at his home address.
 * Dina Abou Karam, community manager for The Mighty Number 9, blocks Kickstarter supporters who support GamerGate from the game’s official twitter.
 * Stardock CEO Brad Wardell releases a blog post in which he expressed sympathy for GamerGate and dismay at the "character assassination and harassment" conducted by its opponents.
 * Editor Titanium Dragon is banned from Wikipedia for "inserting unsourced or poorly sourced defamatory content" into an article about Zoe Quinn. Titanium dragon had included a Cinemablend article describing the doxxing of TFYC and a Forbes article about accusations made by Zoe Quinn against Wizardchan.

22 Sep 2014

 * 8chan announces a partnership with 2ch.net.
 * Milo Yiannopoulos posts the first #radionero broadcast. Guests include Christine Sommers and Adam Baldwin.
 * An anonymous contributor from a US congressional IP address edits Kotaku's wikipedia page to state that GamerGate opponents are running a campaign of cultural marxism. The edit was quickly reverted.
 * TechRaptor interviews game developer and Stardock Corporation CEO Brad Wardell, who speaks out against irresponsible journalism and supports #GamerGate's end goals.

23 Sep 2014

 * Gamergate breaks one million tweets.
 * Milo Yiannopoulos publishes another GameJournoPros article describing sloppy, unethical reporting by Kotaku opinion editor Ben Kuchera. The article describes how Kuchera published a story about false sexual harassment allegations against Stardock CEO Brad Wardell. Milo cites two unnamed industry sources who thought that the articles were intended to cause "professional damage to someone he perceived to have right-wing politics."
 * Jimmy Wales, one of the co-founders of Wikipedia, responds to GamerGate issue by saying "To everyone who is asking me. I know little about #GamerGate and will not have time to look into it until Thursday. Meanwhile, relax, ok?"
 * Eron Gjoni asks for financial assistance in an ongoing legal battle with his ex girlfriend. Eron's GoFundMe page is taken down shortly afterwards due to a cited TOS violation . Eron later confirms that his GoFundMe was fully funded (approximately 2,000 USD) before it was shut down and that he was able to receive his money.
 * Contributer to IGN, Matt Clark has a meltdown on Twitter.

24 Sep 2014

 * The Escapist publishes an article of interviews conducted with female game developers on the subject of GamerGate.

25 Sep 2014

 * Jimmy Wales tweets that the GamerGate Wikipedia entry is "not unfair to either side. It's just a badly written battleground." Wales proceeds to state that he will lock current editors from changing the GamerGate Wikipedia entry and bring in neutral 3rd parties to rewrite it.
 * Allum Bokhari posts an article on Techcrunch deploring the politicization of gaming journalism and compares the gamer revolt to what would have happened if game journalists had sided with Jack Thompson instead of denouncing him.
 * EA director Chris Mancil comments on GamerGate. Mancil points to a "loss of connection between ordinary gamers and the games industry" as the primary driving force behind #GamerGate and compares the rage with "banks, cellular providers, airlines, cable companies and the hate those relationships generate with customers who NEED that service but get treated like beasts."

26 Sep 2014

 * Rumors spread of SilverString Media bringing in PR teams to do damage control on GamerGate. 8chan posters suggest that PR will attempt to neutralize the uproar from gamers with an attack from moderation.
 * KotakuInAction posters report seeing over 1,700 twitterbots spamming #GamerGate tweets.

27 Sep 2014

 * InternetAristocrat releases GamerGate Part 1: The Path We've Taken video.

28 Sep 2014

 * KingofPol is doxxed by a 4chan moderator. KingofPol later confirms that he was was doxxed on his official twitter.

30 Sep 2014

 * Jack Conte, CEO of Patreon, tweets that many people find the Sarkeesian Effect documentary to be "hurtful and exclusive" and considers taking it down. Patreon later decides not to take down the Sarkeesian Effect account.
 * Intel pulls advertiser support from Gamasutra.