Intel Drops Gamasutra Sponsorship Over Controversial Editorials

An anonymous reader writes Processor firm Intel has withdrawn its advertising from Gamasutra in response to the site's decision to carry feminist articles. The articles had drawn the ire of the self-described "Gater" movement, a grass-roots campaign to discredit prominent female games journalists. Intel was apparently so inundated with criticism for sponsoring the Gamasutra site that it had no choice but to withdraw support. An Intel spokesperson explained that "We take feedback from our customers very seriously especially as it relates to contextually relevant content and placements" and as such Gamasutra was no longer an appropriate venue for their products."

Comments

Re:gtfo

[PopeRatzo]

I never heard of any of this shit before today. Who and what are these people and why should I care? I don't get it.

You shouldn't care. Unfortunately, the people who should care do not. There is a lot of ugly misogyny in games. This is because such a large percentage of gamers are scumbags or young men who engage in the online equivalent of pulling a girl's pigtails because she makes them feel funny in the pants and they don't yet know why.

The problem is that, being online, there are no longer limits. If you're a woman gamer, and you don't respond to certain male gamers they way they want you to, you will get death threats, rape threats and doxxing. And it goes from 0-60 in nothing flat. Playing online games all day has left many of these young men completely without any sort of self-governance of their id. And people end up getting hurt. Sometimes in very real-world ways.

The fact that most games are written and told from an adolescent male point of view does not help. It creates a sort of greasy milieu where it's easy to believe that any behavior toward a woman is acceptable.

Lots of good gaming sites like Gamasutra are looking to include more female voices in coverage of games, because it turns out (much to our surprise) that there are actually women gaming out there and interestingly enough, they don't want to be treated like shit every single goddamn day of their lives. I don't know anything about these "gaters" (and when I google it I get a bunch of misspelled information about Florida college football) and I haven't read Gamasutra in a while (I don't see anything on their current front page that would indicate any striking feminist agenda at work). But I do know that Microsoft would throw a baby off a bridge for a dollar bump in stock price, so whatever the facts are in this story, there's a good chance that Microsoft is in the wrong. Because.