Looks like the gamers won this round.
Rallying on sites like 4chan and Reddit, members of the gaming community have pressured chipmaker Intel into pulling advertisements from Gamasustra, a game development site that published a purportedly controversial opinion piece over the summer.
"Intel has pulled its advertising from website Gamasutra," said Intel spokesperson Bill Calder, as quoted by Re/code. "We take feedback from our customers very seriously especially as it relates to contextually relevant content and placements."
Intel's move has only fueled tension in the video game community, which has recently been reexamined through a feminist lens to be found lacking.
The online mob, which called their campaign Operation Disrespectful Nod, reportedly "flooded" Intel with complaints about freelance writer Leigh Alexander's opinion piece entitled "'Gamers' don't have to be your audience. 'Gamers' are over."
In response to that article and other essays, gamers gathered on Twitter through the hashtag #gamergate to attack Gamustra and other sites, using a detailed outline to guide a barrage of emails.
Ironically, Alexander's piece discussed the mob mentality that sometimes characterizes the gaming community and has been so aptly exemplified in the recent ODN campaign.
"Game websites with huge community hubs whose fans are often associated with blunt Twitter hate mobs sort of shrug, they say things like 'we delete the really bad stuff, what else can we do' and 'those people don't represent our community'--but actually, those people do represent your community. That's what your community is known for, whether you like it or not," Alexander wrote in the piece published on Aug. 28.
Alexander decided to write the article after game maker Zoe Quinn was harassed online and subjected to rape and death threats, she told the New York Times' Bits blog.
"They think someone is coming to take their toys away," Alexander said of the gamers who target Quinn and other women.
See Now: OnePlus 6: How Different Will It Be From OnePlus 5?
