'I will find out who you are and rape and kill you'

Women gamers reveal extent of threats driving them offline

- HOLLY EVANS

It was during the Covid-19 pandemic that Lydia Fox decided to start live-streaming her gameplay on Twitch, a site dedicated to showcasing video gaming.

Describing herself as an avid gamer, she was no stranger to misogynistic and toxic comments, yet she soon found herself receiving frequent anonymous emails with disturbing sexual and abusive content.

“It got to the point that it affected my mental health so much that I had to quit,” she told The Independent. Now, she only plays with female gamers and avoids playing online with strangers in order to escape any potential abuse.

Her experience echoes those of other female gamers, with a new survey in the UK and US revealing that two in three female players experience toxic and threatening behaviour from male gamers.

More than one in 10 of the women surveyed reported that they had received rape threats, with a further 34 per cent stating that they had received sexual harassment online.

Nearly half of the 1,004 participants in a survey conducted by market research company Bryter said they had received verbal abuse, with others sharing that they had been stalked on other platforms.

As a result, a quarter of female players avoid certain genres, such as sports and shooters, to avoid the negative environments they foster.

For Katya Varbanova, her interest in gaming began as a teenager when she discovered her talent at the multi-player shooter game Counter-Strike. Despite frequently encountering misogynistic comments from male players and complaints to the administrators that as a girl “she couldn’t be that good”, she just put it down to the experience of the particular game.