You're hurting us by staying on Twitter - A message to the games industry
Good Bird 🐦
Twitter used to be a good place, for many industries, but specifically the games industry.
Journalists, Enthusiast writers, Indie games, major publisher brands, and PR companies all flourished on what used to be called the world’s town hall.
But that’s no longer the case.
Whilst, many other users, and industries, have made the change away from Twitter, picking up accounts on Threads, the Fediverse, and many other platforms, the games industry has stayed put.
Major names and brands continue to use Twitter as their primary social media platform. Continuing to interact and post multiple times an hour. They continue to grow a following, and in turn this incentivises anyone wanting to follow them to chose Twitter as their platform of choice.
With this concentration of names, this has knock on effects. New games, new services, and new companies set up shop on Twitter and nowhere else.
The big names are anchoring the entire industry to this platform.
This is no longer acceptable.
Bad Bird 🦅
Staying on Twitter, is now presenting active harm to the community, especially marginalised voices.
People of Colour, Women, and LGBTQIA+ people are actively targeted, discriminated and abused on Musks ‘free-speech’ platform.
In the time since Musk took over the platform, he has reversed suspensions on accounts of users who are known white-supremists, mysognists, and extremely right wing.
By giving these users a platform, they are free to spout their hurtful views to their growing fanbase with some having a following in the hundreds of thousands.
Twitter is the place where voices who want to continue to oppose race equality, woman’s rights, and queer rights, thrive. It is the traction online that is allowing those views to translate into the real world with active discrimination against black voters, women’s right to choose, and services needed to help transgender individuals.
But it’s not just the real world implications. Twitter, in itself is a cesspit or hate and violence. It’s not uncommon for people in the games industry, especially non-straight-white-men to receive death threats, swatting attempts, doxxing, and harassment of family members.
I’m not angry, I’m disappointed 😞
I was so proud of the games industry a decade ago where they took the me-too movement in their stride, and provided a unified voice that women’s rights were not a joke.
It was a surprise, gaming has always had its roots in sweaty LAN parties, locker-room talk, incels, and graphics cards with nearly naked women on them.
But the industry stepped up. They silenced any voice still wanting to hurt women from within their ranks, remember Colin from Kinda Funny?
They advocated for healthier workplaces by exposing studios with toxic workplaces, crunch culture, and women crying in bathrooms (Riot, Rockstar, Ubisoft).
They took diversity in their stride allowing for the normalisation of black and queer voices in the mainstream view. We have more women, people of color, and queer people on podcasts, editorial staff, streaming, and production than ever before.
Only the progress of the games industry in advocating for equality, could a black, queer, furry win at EVO, a predominantly straight male space, not be buried in a deluge of racist, homophobic lash back.
The games industry has done such a good job for so long in advocating for us and making the space safe, that this insistence to stay on twitter is quite shocking.
But it’s hurting us. It’s actively putting followers at risk, it’s actively putting up-and-coming names at risk, and it’s actively supporting a platform that seeks to suppress our human rights across the globe.
And it needs to end now.
I don’t care where you go, but get in a group chat and decide on a location, and make the move. Your followers deserve to be safe, and you are actively putting them at risk and undoing all your years of hard work by continuing to use twitter.
Note: I refuse to refer to Twitter by its current name, if its owner and users are not willing to respect pronouns and new names, I’m not going to respect their name change. I will never deadname a human, but I will deadname a multimillion dollar company.
Extra Note: I personally have a twitter account, though I no longer use it, post on it, or advertise its existence. It’s been a necessity to keep following the names and brands in the industry to develop and support reconnect. I was hoping to see the industry move off of it, but that doesn’t seem to happen. I will be deleting it in the near future.