GYGO: GameStop Layoffs, Twitch Moderates Breastfeeding, and the ESA Doxes Journalists

Hello and welcome to GYGO! I’m Kael, your local gaming enthusiast, and I’m coming to you all the way from Japan to bring you the hottest gaming news. I recently moved to a small town in Kyushu, so I haven’t had much time to game, but I sure did get into some Stardew Valley on my collective 15 hours of travel time.

GameStop Continues to Raise My Nostalgia for Independent Game Stores

GameStop recently laid off more than 50 people, according to reports from Kotaku. This includes highly paid district leaders responsible for coordinating the operation of multiple stores. Current leaders can now be responsible for over 20 Gamestops at a time. This comes as GameStop is apparently restructuring its business model, attempting to create stores that cater to more niche markets, such as esports fans and retro gamers.

Twitch Decides Babies Are Sexy (But Only When They’re Hungry)

Streaming website Twitch removed several clips from their service last week for supposedly inappropriate content—but that content is the perfectly legal, natural, and non-sexual act of breastfeeding a child. This controversial decision comes in response to streamer HeatheredEffect feeding her baby on stream. All clips from the brief event were taken down under claims that they violated the website’s terms of service for sexual content.

HetheredEffect is a new mother and a professional Twitch streamer. Anyone who has ever been around a newborn knows that babies don’t care whether you’re on or off-camera when they’re hungry, and the average Twitch viewer doesn’t care whether your baby is hungry or not when you walk off-camera for fifteen minutes. Twitch has since clarified that breastfeeding is not against the site’s terms of service.

The previous section features additional reporting by Melissa Brinks.

At GenCon, Cis People Continue to Be Weird About Bathrooms

Trans and gender-nonconforming people at GenCon are reportedly being harassed by the convention center staff. The staff, while not directly related to GenCon, are mainly in charge of making sure attendees are staying to authorized areas. The follow up to these reports suggests that they are taking their duties too far when it comes to the bathrooms, and attendees are being forced to take it upon themselves to escort people to the restroom they feel most comfortable with.

The Entertainment Software Association Accidentally Doxes Thousands of Video Game Journalists

Last week, journalist and YouTuber Sophia Narwitz published a video called “The Entertainment Software Association just doxxed over 2000 journalists and content creators,” in which she disclosed that the ESA, via the E3 website, was publicly hosting a spreadsheet containing personal information about some 2,000 game journalists. This information included names, phone numbers, and home addresses. The spreadsheet was quickly copied and shared among notorious troll and GamerGate-affiliated sites and forums, leading many of those journalists whose data was exposed subject to harassing phone calls.

The ESA removed the direct link after being notified by some of the journalists on the list, but the spreadsheet was still accessible by typing in the direct link or by searching via Google cache. Other lists were available until August 5, but have since been removed from the ESA website. Unfortunately, screenshots and duplicates are still in circulation.

— Melissa Brinks

Ooblets Developer Faces Bigoted Harassment After Epic Store Exclusivity Announcement

Following the announcement that Ooblets would be an Epic Store-exclusive for a time after release, messages flooded developer Glumberland’s Discord. These messages were hateful, slur-laden condemnations of the team, suggesting that signing the partnership with Epic had been in some way a betrayal of their fans and supporters. Some claimed that the Epic Story does not accept their local currency or that the store is not available in their country. According to Epic, they accept local prices in many different currencies and are available in most countries except those disallowed by US law, including North Korea and Iran. Notably, Steam is also subject to these restrictions.

While it’s possible that some of these harassers do have legitimate complaints about availability on the Epic store, more people seem incensed by Gluberland’s Ben Wasser’s handling of the situation. In his Medium post about the situation, Wasser says that it was a mistake to engage the trolls with jokes and exasperation. Even so, the intensity of the response is disturbing, especially since Ooblets will be available on Steam at a later date, and on Xbox at launch.

— Melissa Brinks

In Other News

• Over 25 people spent six weeks working for a game company that never existed
• Monster Prom’s artwork was stolen for a Papa Roach poster
• Square Enix and Dark Horse Comics are teaming up to release a Mana series artbook outside of Japan
• Patriot Act With Hasan Minhaj covered video game crunch culture in a recent episode