Gamergate: SXSW Fails to Deliver
Two forums on online harassment in the gaming industry have been canceled by the South by Southwest festival in the wake of “threats” against the panels organizers said.
The interactive festival’s director Hugh Forrest made the announcement Monday to scrap the discussion panels at the March 2016 event in Austin Texas.
The move comes a year after the “Gamergate” affair which involved a spate of threats and harassment of those criticizing the way women are depicted in video games.
The discussion panels scheduled at the interactive technology event were “SavePoint: A Discussion on the Gaming Community” and “Level Up: Overcoming Harassment in Games.”
Forrest said that SXSW organizers “had hoped that hosting these two discussions in March 2016 in Austin would lead to a valuable exchange of ideas on this very important topic.”
But he noted that “in the seven days since announcing these two sessions SXSW has received numerous threats of on-site violence related to this programming.”
“SXSW prides itself on being a big tent and a marketplace of diverse people and diverse ideas” he said in a statement.
“However preserving the sanctity of the big tent at SXSW Interactive necessitates that we keep the dialogue civil and respectful.”
Following the move the news website BuzzFeed said it was withdrawing from the festival unless SXSW reversed course.
“Digital harassment — of activists of all political stripes journalists and women in those fields or participating in virtually any other form of digital speech — has emerged as an urgent challenge for the tech companies for whom your conference is an important forum” BuzzFeed said in an open letter to SXSW.
“We will feel compelled to withdraw…if the conference can’t find a way to do what those other targets of harassment do every day — to carry on important conversations in the face of harassment.”
Last year GamerGate rage turned against Anita Sarkeesian of website FeministFrequency.com who is an open critic of how women are depicted in video games.
Sarkeesian became the target of threats so violent that her appearance to speak at a university in the US state of Utah was canceled.
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