No, Developers Don't Need To Take Responsibility For Getting Harassed
There’s been an ongoing debate within the Destiny community over the last week about what constitutes harassment against developers. It all started with a tweet from Bungie’s senior community manager dmg04 which explained harassment against developers has led to less communication between the studio and the players. “I dream of a day where video game developers (from any studio) can openly discuss their work without being harassed,” dmg04 wrote. “Many in the comments say they do not condone harassment. I hope they also stand against it when they find that friends or family are engaging in it.”
https://twitter.com/A_dmg04/status/1548506545037537282?s=20&t=IFQl_yQyNATM6zsEsllQfA
What surprises me about the community's response to this - though I realize it probably shouldn’t - is the mental gymnastics people are using to redefine harassment. All weekend I’ve seen replies from people that are willing to acknowledge that it’s wrong to harass devs with death threats and dick pics - like the ones Sony Santa Monica devs received this month from gamers who were tired of waiting to find out the release date for God of War Ragnarok - while giving a pass to other forms of harassment. This kind of bizarre equivocation that reframes harassment as well-intentioned feedback only serves to avoid doing the thing that dmg04 is calling on the community to do - stand with the developers against harassment.
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I have some doubts that there is a true misunderstanding about what is and isn’t harassment, rather than simply bad faith actors trying to justify their behavior, but for the sake of argument let’s take these comments at
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