Toxicity in online gaming is woefully common and only seems to have grown worse, particularly for female gamers, with reports indicating over two-thirds of female gamers are still being harassed online.
In online gaming today there’s nothing scarier than being recognized as a female; as reported by Sky News, two-thirds of women in gaming have been subjected to online harassment and 12 percent of women have reported they’ve been threatened with rape.
For the past five years, Bryter Global, a worldwide research agency, has conducted surveys on the online gaming experience for women, and the reports around toxicity have become increasingly worrying: A staggering 65 percent of women experience toxicity in gaming, according to the report. So, it’s no surprise 19 percent of women who game online say this toxicity has done a number on their mental health.
One of the most well-known hatred against women campaigns in gaming was GamerGate, where game designers and developers Zoe Quinn and Brianna Wu were targeted both online and offline. The latter even stated they’d “made her life hell” as she’d received rape and death threats. They also tried to destroy her studio and even hacked her bank account.
The worst part is it’s not just streamers, creators, and public-facing women like Quinn and Wu who experience this kind of toxicity. Women in general are afraid of gaming online. From being threatened with rape, sexual harassment, receiving unsolicited and inappropriate content, enduring verbal abuse, and even being aggressively quizzed about experience, online gaming isn’t a safe space, especially in genres where toxicity has become more prevalent. Some of these genres include sports, shooters like Call of Duty, MOBAs, and strategy games.
Mickey Carroll, the Sky News journalist who originally reported on the women in gaming problem, wrote that she’d even experienced this herself. Immediately after joining a Discord server where she had her profile image displayed, she was bombarded with players calling her a “dirty fucking bitch” and a “fucking whore.” The rest of the same video she shared is absolutely atrocious and clearly highlights just how horrific it is to be a female gamer.
The sad reality is nearly half of the polled female playerbase believes there aren’t adequate processes in place to deal with harassment and toxicity, which makes reporting these online crimes even more challenging. And if they do, one in five women is afraid the offender will find out. While the numbers are still abysmal, reports of harassment did drop between 2022 and 2023 by seven percent. Whether this is because harassment against women has actually dropped or because crimes aren’t being reported is unclear. But it will be interesting to see if this number continues to fall or will rise again in the 2024 Women Gamers Report.
Regardless, this industry has a way to go before women feel safe in online multiplayer games.
