Popular Female Skyrim Modder Has Abandoned Her Work Due to Daily Harrassment
Popular Female Skyrim Modder Has Abandoned Her Work Due to Daily Harrassment
Their departure has sparked another conversation about how the modding scene looks after its own
I think gamers as a whole, though specifically those in niche communities, need to take a long and hard look at themselves. We should celebrate the volunteers that create wonderful content for us, generally with no financial gain. Instead, commonly, there are communities that criticize and tear down every little thing they can think of. They even went as far as to doxx the poor woman. We need to be better, and we need to hold these kind of toxic trolls accountable. Especially those of us who are men, we have a responsibility to call out other men who mistreat women in the gaming industry, or gaming in general.
*Edit: I apologize if I insinuated that all gamers are guilty of this kind of behavior, that was not my intention at all. My sentiment is that many of us do not think about this kind of thing, and less are willing to speak out against their friends. We need to be better about that as a whole. I appreciate you as a person if you are already of this mindset.
The only interaction I've ever had with authors of mods and such was sending them thanks for their hard work. Sad.
Good for her for making the right decision for her own wellbeing. Too many sad little fucks on the Internet who spend all their time harassing others. Pathetic existence.
I don't want you to feel like you're getting it from all sides but...
I apologize if I insinuated that all gamers are guilty of this kind of behavior, that was not my intention at all
You really gotta ignore those "not all gamers" type of posters. They are literally adding nothing to the conversation. If you are a normal person who doesn't harass women only, then you should also be a normal person who doesn't take offense when the community as a whole is criticized.
I don't understand people who "demand" things from volunteers. Open source devs, modders, and still recently content creators are/were treated like public service workers, by some.
Imagine if we went around treating artists as if they were obligated to please each of us individually with their every piece? I'm very happy to see this attitude improve with streaming and youtube, where creators are more and more met with care and support when they have to step away for a bit or retire entirely.
It sadly seems like this modder was eventually putting in tremendous effort, in a vain attempt to please absolutely everyone using her mods. But that isn't a good reason to work for free.
Any work I do for free, is something I do because I want to, but this modder explicitly says she did work she didn't want to do in order to please fans. And I can't help but ask, why? (I know why, but someone should have cared enough to show her she is allowed to just say no, and do whatever she prefers.)
The blurb about her doing music is how you're SUPPOSED to feel doing something for fun. I'm happy that she found her way to something that makes her feel that way.
Welcome to the world of making software for random people, almost certainly made worse by she being a woman.
As others pointed out, most people do appreciate it, but they tend to be silent about it, whilst a small minority are demanding little whinny bitches (in a non-gendered way) who think they're owed service and some are even trolls.
To those reading this, I suggest when you get something you like for free you at least give some feedback that you liked it and, if the person has some kind of sponsoring scheme going on and you really like it, consider contributing, if only to incentivise more of the same.
Those on the other side are people too and they will appreciate it.
"I poured many years of my life into this, just to feel empty. In quitting, I have found my real passion, and have been obsessively working on music. I've even released my first ever album, SPIDERWEB PRINCESS, which is filled with my darkest, most genuine feelings from all of my experiences. Nothing I've ever done has ever been so meaningful to me. I have so much of myself to share with the world, and I'd much rather be remembered for something I actually enjoy."
Apparently her new passion is music. SPIDERWEB PRINCESS
People are asses sometimes, but whenever these conversations come up, I wonder: What do you even want from us? How are random people on the internet supposed to hold random anonymous trolls on the internet “accountable?” You can call them asses, but so? What if they don’t care? They’re anonymous. You could get mods to ban them, but if it’s a free service they can always make another anonymous account. It’s even more confusing in the context of something like an online game as opposed to a forum. What are you supposed to do about someone being an ass when you’ve probably never seen them before and probably won’t see them again?
now before anyone gets misled by some of the reddit threads gamesradar linked to, some quotes from the relevant reddit thread:
I worked extensively on most of her mods. In the period immediately following the Daegon 2.0 controversy, I tracked down several recurring trolls (people here might remember them as cycling through Reddit usernames like "SeranasStankPussy" and other such things) as originating from literal Kiwifarms.
She made a female follower mod called Daegon. It was a suggestive follower with sexy voice and looks, and "bratty princess" personality.
There was an idea about developing romance option for the follower. The fans were so excited about it. However she ended up adding a bodyguard character as Daegon's romantic partner instead of opening the options to player. Daegon also had a major backstory rewrite, which was deemed as straying too far from TES lore. Fans felt betrayed. The backlash was so fervently hostile that anything the author posted always received downvotes and she was demeaned/harassed for posting anything (something like "you dare to show your face here?"), even when it's not related to Daegon.
At the time, she removed the old version and people leaked her discord server chat, which was very hostile and demeaning to the people complaining.
Basically: the mod author developed and people on her discord developed a para-social relationship and it went as expected. You can search this sub for that whole thing
There's more details on her discord (as usual):
my photos get passed around on skyrim servers, im called a slut and whore, and for what?
gamesradar linked to a few of the threads that got overwhelmed with trolls, who amplified how she blocked users (some of which inappropriately) from her mod pages and claimed she encouraged her fans to doxx people based on a single out-of-context screenshot of a random discord fan.
IMO the vast majority of people that use community mods are pretty thankful and just enjoy them despite any issues the mod has so long as overall it works well. They just play and keep their mouths shut.
There are a few that offer real and constructive criticism.
And the rest are the vocal trolls that just hate on everything. Unfortunately if they aren't "fucking your mother last night" on whatever game chat you might be on they're busy trashing on the "unplayable" game they've spent 500 hours playing in the last several months or on the forums berating the modders' efforts. They're just hateful people and hating on women in general is par for the course, if one dares participating in gaming they're just another target for their shitty incel behavior.
This isn't even about gaming, necessarily.
Girls who code are rare. There are probably more AFAB coders at my work than those who identify as female. And a hell of a lot more men.
And I'm in a progressive city in a progressive state.
I work in IT, and I think there is one woman out of 50 employees on my corner of the org chart, and that's the CIO's admin assistant.
I'm certain it's culture, and it doesn't just go for programming, it goes for almost all of STEM. There was a recent "Stuff You Should Know" episode about toy chemistry sets, and they made it a point to talk about the marketing, and how it always was with boys, for boys. My son, 8 year old kid, says "that's just wrong! Girls can do all that stuff!". He's got it figured out.
This broad dynamic isn't new and it isn't unique either to gaming or to men. Every single creative volunteer community on the net is filled with assholes and drama llamas, of any and all genders. It's just the nature of the thing. You see the same things over and over with game modding, cracking, romhacking, emulation, manga scanlation, anime fansubbing, vocaloid production, mmd modeling, fanfic, fanart, and so on and on.
People often (generally?) are willing to invest the time and energy into whatever it is that they're going to post online at least in large part because they crave the attention they hope it will bring, and specifically, they want to be lauded for their talent and skill.
And that often runs up against the fact that an awful lot of the responses they're going to get are going to come from self-absorbed and entitled assholes bitching because they don't like whatever it is that they're getting for free, and think they have to be accommodated.
And very often, the response from the creator, unsurprisingly really, is to effectively (or even literally) say, "Fine then - fuck you all. I'm done."
And 'round and 'round it goes, and has from the start, and likely will never stop. It's just an unfortunate but pretty much inevitable clash between a personality type that's likely to create and share something online for free and a personality type that's likely to comment on something somebody else created and shared with them for free.
Thousands of hours, months of hard work. For about 300 bucks and a bunch of incels doxxing and harassing her.
I cannot fathom why she left.
Stuff like this is why I don't tell people I game. The Gamer Stink is real and I don't want to be guilty by association. Seriously, go touch grass. The things that you're denigrating someone else for are pixels and code on a computer. Find some way to not be garbage humans.
Her music is interesting. Hope she ends up happier
I think gaming is too mainstream like television/movie viewers to lump it into some type of niche group/activity these days. Especially with the increased communication and connectivity that the internet provides that brings all sorts of wanted and unwanted people together.
I'm someone who enjoys gaming, and when I play games like The Finals these days I disable chat/voice because most people are assholes. Game previously didn't have chat and enabling that turned it from what felt like a wholesome community because I wasn't exposed to their thoughts to it breaking the illusion when they were able to express themselves.
I think this is more a more broad societal issue and a worrying one of being shown what people truly think. Even a minority is a huge amount when the population is billions, so a lot of damage can be done. Games is just another avenue they choose to be toxic in along side other vehicles provided to communicate their thoughts.
Reading the article, this is a typical case of burnout. It's happening to every artist, content creator, modder, foss developer, etc. On the long term we all have to find a balance or we won't last long. And tbh, just learn to ignore the trolls and focus on the positive things and your passion or they will win. You can't take them seriously. It seems the person in the article has already found herself another passion project and could throw away the suffocating chains of responsibilty and something she did not enjoy anymore and move on. I think instances like these really show us we are all just humans and we should appreciate the things we are given.
i’m sorry that you have to deal with the outfall of this, OP. gamers are notoriously the most overly sensitive group to generalize, even when they’re meant to think “i recognize that this is pointing out bad apples in my community”. instead, they immediately start defending themselves as if you specifically named them
the sane response is to go “wow that is awful. the gaming community does indeed contain some terrible people, i am glad to be one of the good ones and will distance myself from this behavior”
Incels/"gamers" harassing a woman - shocker.
It is bad enough having gamers online foaming at the mouth like you just stabbed their mom when you make a mistake in a group.
the boob jiggle physics are genuinely ridiculous on this mod, i just watched the preview. gamers are brain broken
After reading the article, I'm not entirely on her side, most people don't want to be cucked in a videogame since it probably brings up bad memories. The mod didn't release like that, she kept going in that direction and people voiced their disdain.
Fuck you for bringing sex into this. Fans should not harass volunteers as basic courtesy, the end. Most importantly because the modder wasn't harassed for being a female but because her work, but you can't get clicks unless you mobilise the culture war fanatics. American culture wars are pervasive and cancerous and we should strive not to emulate what goes on in that late stage capitalism hellhole.