Sadly, these stories of content creators facing bigotry online aren’t new, and speak to the larger conversation around diversity’s place in the industry. In a 2022 Games Developer Conference survey, nearly a quarter of developers said their studios had not focused any resources on diversity or inclusion initiatives within the last year. Relegating these initiatives to the sidelines can have lasting repercussions, signaling not only to other developers but to consumers who play their games that they should not be concerned about this lack of representation. Game development and consumption are not isolated from one another. Ignoring issues around representation in one part of the gaming ecosystem, be it developers or consumers, can reverberate to the other. And if a game ends up becoming a hit, Gray explained, that damage is amplified tenfold.
