Naughty Dog veteran Kurt Margenau took to Twitter to lament toxic behavior displayed by the gaming community, especially towards vulnerable groups.
In response to a Kotaku article that interviewed popular streamer Emme “Negaoryx” Montgomery and highlighted the abuse and death threats she continues to receive, Margenau said that “we can never overestimate how hard it is to be a woman in this industry.” With reference to The Last of Us Part II, Margenau said that a lot of the abuse and threats that Naughty Dog received from angry gamers were directed at developers who belong to vulnerable groups. He wrote:
In my early 20s, I was apprehensive about saying I worked in games because it was too nerdy to impress girls. Now I’m apprehensive about it because of the image the ‘Gamer’ audience paints to the world. We can never overestimate how hard it is to be a woman in this industry. I have never had my life threatened on Twitter. Ever. I was a part of a game that made a lot of people VERY angry. Never got a death threat. Who did? The women involved, LGBTQ, BIPOC, Jewish people involved. This is just a part of their life and it’s fucking trash. Be better.
Naughty Dog Vice President Neil Druckmann previously revealed that he received a plethora of anti-Semitic messages from players who were upset over The Last of Us II. Another Naughty Dog developer, Jan ‘Gabby’ Llanillo revealed that nearly all the abusive and threatening messages she received included a slur or “attack pointed at parts of my identity.” “I was getting to a point where I thought getting hate and threats thrown my way was normal just because I worked on TLOU2,” she tweeted.
As Margenau puts it, be better, people.
Note: PlayStation LifeStyle has a zero tolerance policy towards threats, abuse, and justifications of such behavior. Anyone caught even remotely justifying toxicity will be banned.
