Games

This Again

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28 September 2016

By Alex Khalil

A few months back, we touched on abuse in online gaming, and it seems we are seeing a resurgence. After a Twitch user deleted her account due to sexist and abusive comments, there has been an outcry for more to be done to combat abuse in live chat on Twitch.

Anna has faced abuse before, when she used to host e-sports events.
Anna has faced abuse before, when she used to host e-sports events.

Female gamers have spoken to Newsbeat, saying they get regular abuse from strangers in chat. Anna Prosser Robinson, who works at Twitch, said that improvements are coming “as fast as they can”. Anna is the programme manager at Twitch, and hosted e-sports at a time. She said that Twitch is working incredibly hard to put an end to this kind of abuse.

YouTube added that “harassment has no place on the platform and we have guidelines against it”.

Candy, a Twitch streamer who makes a living off of live streams, explained “They tell me they’re going to find me and they’re going to rape me,”

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Here we see Candy in Black Ops III

“They say they’re going to kill me. Anything they can, just to stop me doing what I’m doing. It makes me feel terrified because I don’t know what to do about it.”

It’s disgusting.

That a woman online should be subject to this kind of abuse from misogynistic b**phats who have nothing better to do with their time.

Twitch attracts over 100 million people to watch streams and their favourite content creators, from people like Jesse Cox to The Yogscast. The majority of the user base understands that this kind of misogyny is wrong, and interact positively with other members of the community and whoever is on stream.

Twitch and YouTube are doing their best to ensure that their platforms are openly available to all genders, and that those people can feel safe whilst being there.

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