While God of War Ragnarok was meant to be one of the biggest games of the year, earlier this week it was sadly postponed to 2022. Even ignoring that this is a common thing in the game industry, one person whose fault this wasn’t — and who seems to be receiving a good proportion of blame — is God of War 2 writer Alanah Pearce, who took to Twitter to highlight one of the abuse tweets she’s received since the game’s delay made the news.
God of War 2 writer Alanah Pearce highlights abusive tweets
Pearce highlighted a tweet she received after the GoW 2 delay was announced, which saw an unnamed user DM her saying: “Lmaooo you get hired then god of war is delayed first time ever … to busy dreaming about getting gang r**ed by your all your simp twitch subs to actually do work lmao … Hope it happens and someone streams it and you get fired because they all know your a useless wh*** and the game comes out 2021 and PS5 ONLY.”
Pearce responded to the abusive message with good humor, saying how she had “finally been initiated” as a woman game developed, which shows how commonplace this type of abuse is towards female game developers in the industry.
Aside from the ones I got for being hired in the first place, I think this is my first game-dev-related abusive message. I’VE FINALLY BEEN INITIATED, LOOK AT ME GO! 🎉 pic.twitter.com/17jNTGGvSx
— Alanah Pearce ❄️🪓 (@Charalanahzard) June 4, 2021
Even ignoring the abuse part, it is particularly telling that these comments accuse Pearce of being the sole reason that God of War Ragnarok was delayed, even though she is mostly the game’s writer and not the one in charge of the project. She only joined the project at the end of last year, after leaving Rooster Teeth. The decision instead fell to creative director Cory Barlog, who also took to Twitter to support Alanah Pearce and call the abuse against her “bullshit.”
For real, y’all, this is some BULLSHIT!
You want to be mad at somebody for ANYTHING GOW related – the delay, ps4/5, trolls, subtitle size, Sigrun, whatevs – be angry with me.
I made the calls. I did this.
Don’t bother the team, they are all very good people doing great work. pic.twitter.com/D5rsvzFmgV
— cory barlog (@corybarlog) June 4, 2021
Unfortunately, this abuse of women from a subset of entitled gamers is a common one in the games industry. It’s also not the first time Alanah Pearce has been in the news over harassment and abuse. Back in 2019 her personal details, including her home address and phone number, were accidentally leaked by the ESA, the organization in charge of E3. She was doxxed, harassed, and inundated with abusive messages as a result. In 2017, she also joined in a strike against her formed employer IGN, until the corporation issued an apology for the sexual harassment allegations by fellow IGN employee Kallie Plagge.
