TechRaptor Getting Attacked By Journalists After Valve Featured Them In Curator Update
On 26th October 2017 Valve posted a new blog about new updates in the steam curator section highlighting several features which will help users discovery and know about more new games and developers insight. the post came with an image of TechRaptor a well-known games review website but Games Journalists did not like a Pro GamerGate website getting featured on Valve.
Journalists from Kotaku, Rock Paper Shotgun, Gamasutra, and more made angry tweets directed towards Valve and altered their followers by claiming that Valve is supporting Pro GamerGate.
The outcry over TechRaptor getting featured in a Valve blog post started when Nathan Grayson a writer from Kotaku made several tweets about it.
no idea what techraptor is up to these days, but they sure were a hoot when gamergate was at its peak https://t.co/ReF3jKR3Ib
— na’thun gravestone (@Vahn16) October 26, 2017
Dominic Tarason from Rock, Paper, Shotgun also joined in the outrage saying TechRaptor is bad and furthermore also encouraged developers to boycott the website and stop interacting with them.
LRTs: Seriously, fuck Valve for featuring Techraptor of all sites front-and-center like that.
Techraptor are very bad and very stupid.
— Dominic Tarason (@dominictarason) October 26, 2017
Indie devs, please stop interacting with Techraptor. They were ‘neutral’ on Gamergate. i.e. they endorsed the abuse at every opportunity.
— Dominic Tarason (@dominictarason) October 26, 2017
Savy gamers also chimed in few words showing their disgust over valve selection
New curator update coming to Steam, and first thing your see is a grumblegorp curator being featured https://t.co/GJmywf5Z9w
— Spewy Docter (@LewieP) October 26, 2017
I always had my concerns about Valve, but thought they did a lot of good. This is kind of terrifying.
— Spewy Docter (@LewieP) October 26, 2017
With all the commotion TechRaptor owner and founder Rutledge Daugette also made some tweets in the site defense.
It’s frustrating when people are so set on living in the past that grudges are held for yrs, and a mistake is treated as full rep of you.
— Rutledge Daugette (@TheRealRutledge) October 26, 2017
How about, instead of continuing to pick fights when others have moved on – we work on growing and improving our industry. Positivity.
— Rutledge Daugette (@TheRealRutledge) October 26, 2017
Following the outcry Valve did change the images from TechRaptor to IGN but later it also got changed to Rock, Paper, Shotgun. so it was assumed that Valve is rotating images from different curator available on steam. Rutledge thought the same but later changed his thought when the image changed multiple times.
Actually – I should amend this: We don’t fully know if we’ve been removed. It’s possible there’s a rotation. Timing was just weird.
— Rutledge Daugette (@TheRealRutledge) October 26, 2017
With all angry journos attacking TechRaptor Zoe Quinn also made several tweets with screenshots of tweets made by TechRaptor during the GamerGate incident.
Steam is literally featuring a gamergate website in its blogpost about who is gonna help decide visibility issues for devs. pic.twitter.com/yViFS6ZgdF
— ?zombië queen? (@UnburntWitch) October 26, 2017
Rutledge finally gave his statement on behalf of the TechRaptor about their views and stance in the GG movement.
I’ll just go ahead and post this here, because what Alex said is correct, but there’s more detail to our “involvement” you should read. pic.twitter.com/LaUCrI3KVE
— Rutledge Daugette (@TheRealRutledge) October 26, 2017
But even after explaining the views of the site people discarded his opinions and continued to criticize and labeled the site as a harassment supporter.
Just adding that being ‘in the middle’ when the two sides are ‘Years-long harassment campaign against women’ and ‘Not that’ is still bad.
— Dominic Tarason (@dominictarason) October 26, 2017
calling yourselves the kind of journalism that gamergate wants to see means you support a culture of harassment.
— Skeleton☠️Warrior☠️ (@RBryant2012) October 26, 2017
TechRaptor was one of the few sites who gave a proper coverage on the GG movement and the corrupt journalist practices in the gaming industry.
Both the Pro GG and Anti GG group were harassed by trolls, the incident was even investigated by FBI who released an official report which stated that there was no evidence of GamerGate being a harassment movement but as many of you may know only the anti GG’s harassments were reported by the mainstream media which framed the Pro GG group as a hate group.
You can check out a well-written book named Inside Gamergate: A Social History Of The Gamer Revolt by James Desborough about the side of GG movement which you will never hear in mainstream media.
Well, Valve may have made it seem like they are rotating the images in the blog but steam gamers are certainly not happy with it and it being bombarded with comments to bring back TechRaptor.