oh, and btw, until you've fucking *been* the target of one, as far as I'm concerned you have *zero* moral authority to tell me how I should feel about targeted campaigns to get an individual dev fired.

fucking gamers. https://twitter.com/Delafina777/status/1264761845740482562

and yeah, it's different

the core people trying to get Mearls fired aren't, as far as I can tell, a bunch of channers with some neo-Nazi bandwagon-jumpers upset because he talked too much about feminism over the course of his career

and don't get me wrong, there's part of me that's like at fucking LAST, some white man praised as a "luminary" in games might have *some* sense of what GG targets & any POC, woman, out queer person, etc. who talks about inclusivity has either experienced or has hanging over them

and were it a dude who'd actually harassed people, I'd be like, eh, you know what, I can't bring myself to care, let him feel afraid like his victims did

but at the end of the day, what I know is this:

devs work for companies that view them as fodder, creating content for fans who will, if they don't like the color of a fucking costume, send them threats, abuse, and worse

And every time there's a coordinated campaign demanding a dev be fired, it gives game companies one more bit of leverage over them.

They will absolutely give you Mearls. They'll fucking stake him out like a goat.

And *nothing* will change, because the steam behind this will disperse.

All that will be accomplished is that executives and HR departments will have one more case study about how they should just fire any dev who creates any negative publicity for them.

Do you think HR departments fucking distinguish between "this negative publicity is coming from people who want this dev gone because he enabled a harasser" and "this negative publicity is coming from white supremacists"?

News flash: they don't.

And unless you're a VP or C-level, they will *absolutely* fire you if you're causing problems for them. Regardless of how much money you've made them.

They don't distinguish between *pointing out* problems and *causing* problems, btw.

Not that even progressive gamers give a shit. They treat devs who stick their necks out for progressive causes as so much cannon fodder as much as game companies do.

And the only fucking support system is other devs who've been through it.

You know, people who mostly have fucking PTSD and are exhausted and still actually *in the middle of the trauma* because oh yeah, it never actually *stops.*

Like, you don't even know the fucking *names* of the people who usually decide whether a particular dev is too much (read: any) trouble and should get the hatchet, and who blithely move around and protect the harassers who never get internet campaigns to get them removed.

They're the same ones, by the way, who reassure victims of sexual harassment that there won't be any retaliation for reporting, but then find reasons to cut their project... and their jobs.

Who, if the harasser's a manager, tell them who reported them.