Wizardchan

Wizardchan is an imageboard community (in the vein of 4chan or 8chan) that is dedicated to what users refer to as the "wizard lifestyle": a life of prolonged and often involuntary male virginity. Wizardchan users are male and tend to be virgins in their late-20s/early 30s, NEET (not in education, employment, or training), hikikomori (reclused), and/or suffer from physical or mental illness that prevents them from leading fulfilling social lives. Users on Wizardchan "share their thoughts, vent, and discuss their interests and lifestyle as a virgin."

The imageboard has a comprehensive set of rules, many of which serve to create an environment that is not hostile to Wizardchan users (referred to as 'wizards'). Some of the rules include:


 * 0. Do not identify as a female or suggest that you are one.
 * 1. Do not discuss your sexual experience or suggest that you have or will engage in sexual activities.
 * 2. Do not discuss your romantic experiences, relationships, or social experiences that are not strictly academic, business, or familial experiences. [...]
 * 3. Do not disparage, advise against, or show contempt for the celibate, NEET, or reclusive lifestyles.

Zoe Quinn Accuses Wizardchan of Harassment
On December 12, 2013, Zoe Quinn posted on Twitter that she was receiving harassment and sexually explicit phone calls from Wizardchan posters in response to her game "Depression Quest".

Despite no evidence being presented, the claims were quickly picked up and repeated by various gaming and technology publications, including The Escapist, Quarter to Three, The Daily Dot, Gimme Gimme Games, GameRanx, Indiestatik, Edge Online and Vice. The majority of the coverage cast Quinn's purported harassment as being a misogynist reactionary response to her being a female game developer trying to have her game "Depression Quest" approved through Steam's Greenlight system.

Meanwhile, users of Wizardchan expressed confusion and dismay at the allegations of harassment and raids against Quinn.

"I find it hard to believe [the phone harasser] was one of us since most anons have social anxiety around phones."

"(...) Nobody here remembers any raid happening, someone last week made a thread about her on /v9k/ and then suddenly [Quinn] claimed people were calling her house telling her to kill herself. It doesn't add up."

Likely helped in part by the publicity Quinn and Depression Quest gained from the reports of harassment and subsequent media coverage, Depression Quest was greenlit on Steam in January 2014 and officially released on Steam on August 11, 2014.

In April 2014, an imgur user posted Zoe Quinn is a liar, a five-part series of images showcasing numerous tweets from Zoe Quinn and screenshots taken from Wizardchan that shed light on the controversy and Quinn's subsequent boost in popularity. The image series theorized that Quinn took advantage of a third-party troll on Wizardchan to receive fame and recognition of Depression Quest at the expense of a community that was unable and unwilling to defend themselves against public backlash. This theory was further supported by Fredrick Brennan (owner of 8chan and previous site administrator of Wizardchan) in an interview held on October 9, 2014, in which he stated that the IP addresses of the users posting harassing comments towards Quinn and Depression Quest on Wizardchan were outside trolls and Zoe Quinn herself. However, no record of the IP addresses has been made publically available.

Reinvestigation by GamerGate
The Wizardchan/Quinn controversy was revisited following revelations from The Zoe Post. Members of the gaming public began to investigate rumors and links between Quinn and various members of the gaming press, and in doing so gave additional scrutiny towards Quinn's claims of harassment from Wizardchan and the lack of further investigation by journalists.

Various charges were leveled against the publications and The Escapist in particular, including not properly investigating the initial claims made by Quinn, not noting that the claims were unsourced allegations, nor attempting to investigate or contact any representatives of Wizardchan despite them strenuously objecting to the allegations.

In response to this, the general manager of The Escapist, Alexander Macris, developed a new Ethics Policy in consultation with the Editor-in-Chief Greg Tito. In addition, the following statement directly addressing the Wizardchan story was issued:

"But to explain is not to excuse. Our editor-in-chief, Greg Tito, having reviewed the facts at hand, concluded we ourselves have been imperfect in maintaining journalistic standards. A particularly problematic article, the one which generated his review, was about the alleged harassment of an indie developer by a forum community which denied the allegations but was itself victimized as a result of them. The article failed to cite the harassment as alleged, failed to give the forum community an opportunity present its point of view, and did not verify the claims or secure other sources. Mr. Tito has personally updated the article and spoken to all our editors about the importance of adhering to standards that will prevent such bad incidents from happening again. We, as a team, apologize for this error, both to our readers and to the forum community that suffered as a result. I, personally, apologize for this error, as well."

- Alexander Macris