Commentary by "Brandon Sinclair, Managing Director":

So let's hold them accountable. There's one place in particular I would love to start doing that, because I think of it as perhaps the clearest moral test the industry has faced in its lifetime, and one it failed in humiliating fashion.

QUOTE | "When people that are prominent in the industry can stand up and say 'I'm part of games, I love games, this hate mob doesn't speak for me, this is not welcome in games', it has the twofold effect of making it less damaging to those that this can hurt, and it does something to repair this horrible misrepresentation of this medium that so many of us love. Condemning them and saying they do not speak for games - it's so fundamental, otherwise this is going to keep happening." - Zoe Quinn in October of 2014, calling on big publishers to speak out against GamerGate, which after several months was very clearly a harassment campaign intended to drive women and marginalized people out of gaming.

QUOTE | [404-page not found] - Electronic Arts, Activision Blizzard, and Take-Two declined to comment for the New York Times when asked about GamerGate.

Ubisoft offered a mealy-mouthed statement to Fortune saying "harassment, bullying and threats are wrong and have to stop." Even that appeared to be a riff on the ESA's similarly uninspired (and similarly late) statement that "Threats of violence and harassment are wrong. They have to stop."

There was no condemnation of the motivations and beliefs behind those threats and harassment, no mention of sexism, racism, homophobia, or anything of the sort. Going by these statements, it wasn't the bigotry these companies had a problem with; it was that people were taking the bigotry just a little too far.

The big websites weren't much better, with IGN eventually releasing a long-winded but similarly substance-less statement that refused to name the problem. GameSpot was only modestly better, mentioning a desire to make gaming an inclusive space without addressing who was being actively excluded. (If you're curious, our own coverage didn't tap dance around the issue, although I do have second thoughts about an editorial I wrote at the time as an olive branch to Gamergate supporters who might have been more useful idiots than rabid misogynists.)

At the time, I attributed the industry's silence on Gamergate to cowardice, some sort of rationalization that "bigots buy games too" and they didn't want to risk even the slightest hit to the bottom line. But the seven years since have suggested that may have been too kind. It might not be that the leaders in the industry and in these companies were too afraid to speak up against sexism, racism, and all manner of intolerance. In many cases, it may be that the decision makers didn't particularly see anything wrong with it in the first place.