Late last week, in a blog post from the studio’s Head of Development, Brianna Wu, Giant Spacekat, an independent mobile developer, announced they would not be attending this year’s PAX East due to numerous death threats they have received over the past five months.
Targeted as part of the recent #Gamergate harassments, Wu stated the she had “made the decision to prioritize the safety of Giant Spacekat’s employees,” saying, “Specifically, we have chosen to withdraw our presence from the Pax East 2015 Expo Hall, due to a concern that in a crowd of such a volume expected at Pax, the safety of our team can not be guaranteed.” Wu, alone having received 46 individual threats against her life , reached out to PAX with her concerns, only to find her calls going unreturned.
Having already agreed to speak at numerous panels at the expo, Wu will attend said panels, but the remainder of the development team will not be present.
For any who might not know, #Gamergate is a title and hashtag adopted by members of online communities such as Reddit and 4chan in a continued harassment campaign against women and minorities in the gaming industry, such as the all-female team of Giant Spacekat.
Last July saw the launch of Giant Spacekat’s first game, Revolution 60 (seen above), a cinematic, choice-driven, sci-fi adventure game on the iOS, featuring an all-female cast. Kotaku reviewed it well, saying it has “all of the hallmarks of a great PC or console game.” As of August a PC/Mac port of Revolution 60 was successfully funded on Kickstarter.