Within the same week, several high-profile game developers were accused of emotional and sexual abuse by women with whom they had previously had professional or personal relationships with.
The shocking wave of allegations was prompted by Nuovo Award-winning indie-developer Nathalie Lawhead, who on August 26th published an extensive blog post to her personal website, which included screenshots of e-mails allegedly exchanged between Lawhead and her abuser, detailing the abuse she received from Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic and The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim composer Jeremy Soule:
“He talked about the mystical power women hold over men with sex. How men are helpless and they need sex. How he needs sex, and a relationship, so he can write his music.
He talked about how composing is sexual, and how he will write about sex as inspiration in his music. He talked about how performing music is very sexual. He wrote songs about women that he had relationships with this way. What he does to women, is what inspires his music.
The work he composed for video games is based on this. He “needs women to inspire him”… there was so much of this, very uncomfortable inappropriate stuff (inappropriate even for friends), and it kept getting darker and darker.
He made advances on me and I explained that I didn’t want this and wanted a friendship. He was very threatening, and didn’t listen. He made it clear that it’s “him or bust.”
He raped me.
Throughout this time Jeremy acted like a victim, and blamed women he was in relationships with (or forced relationships on) for what he was doing.”
Allegedly inspired by Lawhead’s story and bravery, Goddess Mode and Hellcat author Zoe Quinn alleged that she had been “sexually assaulted” and abused by Aquaria and Night in the Woods designer Alec Holowka:
I’ve been silent about this for almost my entire career and i can’t do it anymore. Sorry if this is rambling and messy, I’m scared shitless to out an industry legend like this but I can’t live with the secret anymore 1/2 pic.twitter.com/DpbhtuaoEP
— zoë “bi fieri” quinn (@UnburntWitch) August 27, 2019
2/2 pic.twitter.com/cbNLd84PSG
— zoë “bi fieri” quinn (@UnburntWitch) August 27, 2019
Quinn specifically wrote:
“While I was in Winnipeg he slowly isolated me from everyone else in my life while absolutely degrading me whenever we were alone. He convinced me to talk the 3 friends out of getting a shared place with me there. He convinced me to let him program my game instead of the friend I had been working with, despite many protests. He screamed at me for over an hour once because of the tone in my voice when I said hello. He wouldn’t let me leave the apartment without him and refused to give me the code to get in.
About the sexual assault, he blamed me. He said he was jealous of me, to be wanted like that. He’d bring it up during sex, where he’d regularly be mean and violent. He told me he loved me, in a way no one else would, because he could see that I was terrible and he loved me anyway. And I bought it, because that’s how you feel when you’re recovering from being sexually assaulted.”
Following Quinn’s allegations, Holowka’s fellow Night in the Woods developers announced that they would be parting ways with Holowka due to the allegations, and that Night in the Woods would now be handled by Scott Benson and Bethany Hockenberry:
This week, allegations of past abuse have come to light regarding Alec Holowka, who was coder, composer, and co-designer on Night In The Woods. We take such allegations seriously as a team. As a result and after some agonizing consideration, we are cutting ties with Alec.
— Night In The Woods (@NightInTheWoods) August 28, 2019
Going forward, Night In The Woods will be handled by Bethany and I. We’re not sure what that all means yet. This stuff takes time.
— Night In The Woods (@NightInTheWoods) August 28, 2019
After hearing of Lawhead and Quinn’s accusations, tabletop role-playing game and Dungeons & Dragons content creator Adelaide Gardner came forward to recount her own tale of the abuse she received from Halo: Master Chief Collection (PC) and Gears of War 4 developer Luc Shelton:
Since we’re on the topic of Alec Holowka and other game devs who are sexual assaulters, Luc Shelton of Splash Damage assaulted me and gaslit me and at least one other woman two years ago and plenty (former) mutuals told me to stay quiet about it but I won’t ever shut up anymore.
— Adelaide 🔜 PAXU (@ohadelaide) August 27, 2019
He made me feel crazy, pushing me away then guilt tripping me when I would try to move on. Wouldn’t let me back in his flat if I had left while he was at work on my visits, which would have left me stranded in freezing weather for hours. Accused me of STDs and lying.
— Adelaide 🔜 PAXU (@ohadelaide) August 27, 2019
Insisted it was just his “dominant nature.” I wasn’t allowed to take pictures in his home that would reveal any details. No letting people know where I was. Not even the vaguest geotag. Once he began dating other people (which was okay), people weren’t allowed to know I existed.
— Adelaide 🔜 PAXU (@ohadelaide) August 27, 2019
(TW: graphic sw) The last night I saw him, he handcuffed me so tight I lost feeling in my wrists for hours, and I was bleeding and raw. pic.twitter.com/zS1UjhLkUi
— Adelaide 🔜 PAXU (@ohadelaide) August 27, 2019
The women opening up and naming their accusers were soon joined by software engineer and video game developer Nicole Leffel who related their story of abuse at the hands of Alex Lifschitz, who was ironically a founding member of Quinn’s Crash Override Network, an organization which seeks to provide help and resources to those experiencing online abuse:
since we doing it: i dated a game producer who loved performing feminism in public. in private he took photos of me w/o consent during sex and called another dev a cunt whose partner would leave her if she weren’t suicidal. when I ended it he accused me of “retriggering his PTSD”
— leffel 🐊🌿 (@deviltheirdue) August 28, 2019
the icing on this cake is that i confided all of this to another game dev. we’d been Internet & Conference friends for a while, and she was hot on the “Women In Games” circuit at the time. she consoled me about how terrible he was, then started dating him a couple weeks later 😉
— leffel 🐊🌿 (@deviltheirdue) August 28, 2019
and the cherry on top of the icing on top of the cake is that homeboy further went on to help found a survivor support network, which you’ve probably heard of! 🧁🍒
— leffel 🐊🌿 (@deviltheirdue) August 28, 2019
the takeaways are
– anyone going great lengths to perform their feminism/wokeness is suspect af
– men are mostly the perpetrators of sexual violence, but women are often eager haidmaidens
— leffel 🐊🌿 (@deviltheirdue) August 28, 2019
and since we naming names:
the dude is Alex Lifschitz
the woman is Elizabeth Sampat
for all I know the former has dropped off the face of the planet, the latter is An Important Feminist Voice In Games
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
— leffel 🐊🌿 (@deviltheirdue) August 29, 2019
“dating” probably wasn’t the best word, so let’s be specific
i confided in Elizabeth about Alex when she brought up how they’d almost kissed at a games conf. it seemed like the right time to warn her
she said the right things: she believed me and what he did was unacceptable
— leffel 🐊🌿 (@deviltheirdue) August 29, 2019
in the following months, Elizabeth
– amplified Alex on Twitter
– invited him fly out and stay at her home (which he did, and they tweeted about)
– vouched for him in “feminist” game spaces, e.g. the Critical Distance unconfall while regularly giving Women In Games talks 🙃
— leffel 🐊🌿 (@deviltheirdue) August 29, 2019
As of writing, none of the accused developers have issued a public statement regarding their respective accusations.