Below are resources mentioned and suggested within Anita Sarkeesian’s 2023 “Your DEI Initiatives are Making Your Culture Worse” talk. The Culture Shift Help Desk is a consultation service for those in the games industry and in gaming communities who are trying to bring a liberatory and transformative way of thinking towards addressing harm, abuse, and… Keep reading “Your DEI Initiatives are Making Your Culture Worse Talk Resource List”

Online harassment is an all-too-common strategy used by bad actors online to silence and dehumanize people online. In the games industry, we often see online abuse tactics used against employees at studios and companies when some parts of their audience or player base are upset about an aspect of a game or other communications from… Keep reading “Online Safety Policy Recommendations for Game Studios”

In its second year of operation, the Games Hotline focused on finding more and better ways to share its wisdom and guidance with the community. The resources we created centered on concerning trends and addressing common situations and needs that are relevant to the community, including a comprehensive and detailed guide for mitigating hate raids,… Keep reading “2022 Impact Report”

Blackmail can feel like an impossible, unfair, stressful, and scary situation, but it’s also an old, old trick. Your blackmailer, no matter who they are, wants you to feel terrified and alone and ashamed and rushed, so they can control you. It’s OK to feel all of those things. It’s also OK to breathe, slow… Keep reading “Responding to Blackmail”

In August 2020 we launched the Games and Online Harassment Hotline with the hope to provide a compassionate and culturally specific emotional support to people who make or play games. Since then, we’ve been supporting folks all across games on a wide swath of issues: in-game harassment, industry workplace environments, online harassment and threats, community… Keep reading “2021 Impact Report”

Sometimes people who have caused harassment or have been accused of abuse in communities will text into the Games Hotline for emotional support.  Why would we talk to people who may have harassed, abused, or harmed others? Aren’t we anti-harassment? Well, what we know is that harassment happens in an ecosystem, and we’re committed to… Keep reading “Does the Games Hotline Talk to Harassers Too? How We Have Accountable Conversations”

What really happens when you text into an emotional support hotline? Do we have a secret key to supportive conversations? What if you want to offer emotional support to someone in your own life? Could you do what we do? Honestly, there’s nothing exclusive to how we hold conversations with people reaching out to the… Keep reading “What we do & how you could do it in your own life”