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A charity that helps the physically disabled play video games has received death threats after refusing a donation from a charity event associated with GamerGate.
We received an email requesting permission for a charity event from an associate of Mercedes Carrera,” the organisation said.
Our immediate response was ‘absolutely, we would be honoured to be chosen’. In doing our due diligence we discovered the event organizer was putting together a GamerGate stream that would ‘for now’ be ‘a charity stream’ because they ‘cannot mention that it is a GG stream as it might shy away BZ (Brazzers) and others’.
AbleGamers became concerned by the lack of transparency in the original emails having made no mention of GamerGate. We sent a polite response voicing our concerns at the post and how we must decline to be involved in the event. AbleGamers wished them the best of luck with the event and their future endeavours.
The decision to bow out of a potentially huge fundraiser was not easy. We continued to discuss how we should proceed, but before we could reconvene in the morning, the email response from AbleGamers declining to be the beneficiaries was posted on Reddit with a lot of anger and a few requests for an explanation.
AbleGamers is a group of diverse volunteers from many different backgrounds. All of our volunteers have their own personal feelings on GamerGate and what it stands for. However, as an organization, AbleGamers is 100 per cent neutral.
AbleGamers did not deny donations from GamerGate. We declined to be a party to an event where there was a lack of transparency, and people began discussing how to use the event as a weapon for the agenda of a political movement.”
Despite going to great lengths to remain neutral and not point fingers, the charity has throughout the saga endured a torrent of abuse on Twitter, death threats and even a DDoS attack – although of course the inevitable accusations that these claims are false also followed.
In October Anita Sarkeesian, who along with Zoe Quinn and Brianna Wu has endured the worth of GamerGate’s online hate campaign, was forced to abandon a scheduled school public speaking event after the organisations were threatened with a massacre” on the scale of the 1989 Montreal shooting in which 14 women were shot dead by a man who was upset that women were being taught to work in position he felt were traditionally occupied by men”.
Blizzard boss Mike Morhaime and SCEA head Shawn Layden have both spoken out in criticism of the GamerGate hate movement, although sadly they stand mostly alone as the industry as a whole has failed to take meaningful action.
@cainejw @Chriss_m First time death threat recipients over here. Not liking the feeling.
— AbleGamers Charity (@AbleGamers) December 7, 2014
@ReddFoxxThePoet It's really difficult to keep up.
Very angry people saying hurtful things.— AbleGamers Charity (@AbleGamers) December 7, 2014
Just before 1 PM we experienced inability to connect to the server.
Our host indicated a brief 30-45min DDoS, followed by a blank page.
— AbleGamers Charity (@AbleGamers) December 7, 2014
We're not sure what the people yelling at our twitter want us to do. We were told what happened. Haven't blamed anybod Still being yelled at
— AbleGamers Charity (@AbleGamers) December 7, 2014
We are extremely confused and hurt by the continuous allegations that we would fake a DDoS attack.
3 different host employees said it WAS
— AbleGamers Charity (@AbleGamers) December 8, 2014
When asked, the head administrator said a block of 10 IPs were responsible. The main IP is listed below pic.twitter.com/vDz6UYJZL3
— AbleGamers Charity (@AbleGamers) December 8, 2014
There is nothing else we can show beyond our host repeatedly stating we were attacked.
For the millionth time, we are not blaming anyone.
— AbleGamers Charity (@AbleGamers) December 8, 2014
Whoever did it SUCKS.
End of story
— AbleGamers Charity (@AbleGamers) December 8, 2014
