Nintendo Employee 'Terminated' After Smear Campaign Over Censorship

[Mccuish]

 

Nintendo employee Alison Rapp, who’s been a target of harassment over censorship controversies in recent months, said on Twitter that she has been fired. “Today, the decision was made,†she wrote. “I am no longer a good, safe representative of Nintendo, and my employment has been terminated.â€

 

Rapp laid the blame on those harassing her, saying that the people attacking her for months online had been hounding Nintendo to get her fired, as we reported earlier this month.

 

She’s been a target at least since last fall, receiving so much online venom that she publish a round-up. People had been her “cancerous†and a “feminazi face piercings bitch.†They dug through her online wish-lists to shame her, seeking anything to ruin her rep.

 

Rapp had been on the bad end of cannon shots in gaming’s culture war for many months. She was labelled a social justice warrior and blamed for what appeared to be Nintendo’s efforts to tone down sexualized elements in Western versions of games Nintendo had already published in Japan.

 

For years, she had worked within Nintendo’s Treehouse division, which directly translated the company’s Japanese games, but she didn’t work in translation or localization. She was part of marketing. That didn’t spare her.

 

The Japanese gaming giant has faced increased scrutiny late last year when a number of recent Nintendo games, including Xenoblade Chronicles X and Fire Emblem Fates, had been altered during the localization process. These content edits largely centered on the sexualization of young girls and appeared to be altered out of an assumption by Nintendo that Western audiences would be less tolerant of teenagers being presented as sex objects.

 

Nintendo never did much to explain why it was making these changes, and critics looked for a boogeyman, finding one in Rapp who had a long Twitter history of supporting feminist issues (and an equally long one of seeming to be a huge Nintendo fan long before she worked for the company).

 

 

Among the changes Nintendo made in their games for America was the removal of an option to change a female character’s breast size. “The reality is, I actually had no involvement with localized content changes of any kind,†Rapp said today, as she’d told us in December. “Come on, I *wanted* the XCX [Xenoblade Chronicles X] boob slider!â€

 

Rapp regularly discussed her harassment on Twitter and seemed to be managing her way through it, but, when Fire Emblem Fates was released in February with a flirtatious face-touching mini-game removed, things took another turn. Someone found a 2001 college essay of hers, in which Rapp explored Japan’s relationship with child porn laws and, ironically, seeming to fall more in line with a Japanese cultural viewpoint about the sexualization of teens. It was a complicated, messy essay that often argued for Japan to keep its cultural values intact—the very thing many of her harassers were supposedly arguing for—but was spun by some as defending pedophilia.

 

The idea that Rapp was pro-pedophile became the new line of attack, and an anti-sex trafficking group was even convinced to condemn Rapp.

 

“Over the last few wks [weeks], I’ve had to talk safety measures w/my family - including talks w/police to warn them of possible suspicious activity,†she said. “Throughout this, GG has been digging up all kinds of things about my personal life and contacting Nintendo about them.â€

 

Rapp specifically mentioned the GamerGate today as being agents of her harassment, but it was never clear whether one particular group was after her. My reporting suggested some people had taken tactics used by harassers during GamerGate and applied them here.

A commenter on the Neo Nazi and white supremacist website The Daily Stormer, for example, published an extensive list of contact information for different Nintendo executives, encouraging people to report Rapp and ask for her firing.

 

It might have worked.

 

Beyond saying she’s been “terminated,†Rapp couldn’t (or wouldn’t) say much more.

 

“Obviously this is a lot to sift through and some of it’s highly confidential, so apologies that I can’t go into tons of details,†she said on Twitter. She did not respond to a request to comment.

 

And despite what happened, she was still thankful for her time at Nintendo.

 

“I do want to also say that I had some truly incredible coworkers at Nintendo,†she said, “and I’d love it if you continued to support them.â€

 

We don’t know the full details of what happened, or what the conversations were like between Rapp and Nintendo. It’s possible that Nintendo truly was uncomfortable with Rapp’s college essay, despite it being publicly linked on her Linkedin page, and decided to part ways with her.

 

But we do know this: Nintendo was publicly silent while one of their employees was harassed and smeared online over something she did not do. That’s a fact. It’s not in dispute. Nintendo watched Rapp become the center of a witch hunt and did nothing publicly to defend her. Despite my requests for comment, the company said nothing. As it turns out, maybe that silence said everything.

 

The response to Rapp’s firing has been swift, vocal, and mostly negative, even in places normally hostile to outspoken individuals like Rapp. “Nintendo is in the wrong for firing her,†said a poster on the GG-friendly subreddit Kotaku in Action. “Good job guys you fired a person who literally did nothing wrong,†said another on 4chan. (Other posters in both threads celebrated Rapp’s firing, of course.) The Nintendo of America Twitter feed is being deluged with people protesting and condemning the decision, and one indie developer even says he cancelled a game planned for Wii U.

 

Whether any of this prompts Nintendo to respond is unclear. For now, the silence continues.

 

Credit: Nintendo employee 'terminated' after smear campaign over censorship

 

 

[BadBadNotGood]

So basically they accused her of not wanting young girls to be sexualized? Is that why she's called a cancerous bitch? Gamers, ladies and gentleman.

[Property of Goddess Irene]

So basically they accused her of not wanting young girls to be sexualized? Is that why she's called a cancerous bitch? Gamers, ladies and gentleman.

 

I think it was sort of the opposite. They accused her of promoting pedophilia because she wanted to keep Japanese culture intact.

[Aletheia]

This is the most ridiculous thing I've read all day.

[Mccuish]

I would love to use the boob slider in Xenoblade Chronicles X and have the bikini costume in the new Fatal Frame game.

[BadBadNotGood]

I think it was sort of the opposite. They accused her of promoting pedophilia because she wanted to keep Japanese culture intact.

I just skimmed over it tbh. Wait...

I am so fucking confused now? So did they dislike her at first for assuming she doesn't want sexualization of young girls then another group came and found out about her essay then they raged? I kinda regret clicking this lol.

[Mccuish]

Update on this artlce.

Update - 8:48 pm: Nintendo denies she was fired due to harassment, and says she was let go because she had a second job, which they say was in “conflict with Nintendo’s corporate culture.†The company did, however, acknowledge what’s happened to her in recent weeks:

 

 

“Though Ms. Rapp’s termination follows her being the subject of criticism from certain groups via social media several weeks ago, the two are absolutely not related. Nintendo is a company committed to fostering inclusion and diversity in both our company and the broader video game industry and we firmly reject the harassment of individuals based on gender, race or personal beliefs. We wish Ms. Rapp well in her future endeavors.â€

 

[hyoyeon's lines in check]

LOL @ Nintendo exposing her lies.

[Decretum]

I'm not defending any harassment of any kind, but Kotaku needs to stop acting like the anti-Gamergate crowd are innocent in any of this. They are some of the worst offenders when it comes to getting people who don't agree with their views fired or cheering for someone who doesn't agree with them fired. For example, Josh Olin or, with this case, Jamie Walton. If you are not aware of who Jamie Walton is, she is an activist who founded The Wayne Foundation. A foundation who fights against the sexual exploitation and sex trafficking of children. Recently, she has come under fire for her tweets in which she called for Alison Rapp to be fired. The anti-gg crowd, as well as Ms. Rapp, used this as fuel to state that Mrs. Walton started supporting GG, which is found to be untrue, as Mrs. Walton has claimed that she is neutral in all of this, but apparently anti-GG doesn't care about that and would rather see her campaign that fights against child abuse be ended (Anti-GG Target Speaks Against False Allegations)

 

Recently, it has come to my attention that Nintendo has released a statement that Ms. Rapp was fired due to a second job she was working at the time of her employment at Nintendo.(

She was a cam girl.

.). According to Nintendo, this is grounds for termination. Now, do I think Nintendo would have been right to fire her, if it was due to her views on cp? In my opinion, yes I think they would have still been in the right. Ms. Rapp was not just some random employee working at a video game company. She was the PR at a company that makes games mostly geared towards children. You can not be a PR for a company like this, and make public remarks such as saying cp should not be punished or have lax laws against it. Furthermore, as someone who has read her thesis on the matter, I cannot see how any one can be on her side with this. As quoted in this post from NeoGAF here, "Having read the paper, she argues that child pornography is free speech, then argues that possessing child pornography is not really that bad. Her piece conveniently avoids addressing the fact that the production of this "free speech" victimizes and destroys children." On the contrary, it can be argued that she typed up this thesis some years back, and her views have changed since then. However, looking at some of her recent tweets, I do not think that is the case.

 

 

 

 

Like I said up above, I do not condone any harassment or violence on either side of the GG argument, and I do not support anyone who partook in the harassment of Ms. Rapp or Mrs. Walton. I think it is childish. However, I do believe both sides have a right to have their voices be heard, which is why I am posting this here.

 

I'm sorry if this out of whack, but please bare with me.

[Mandilinn]

Honestly, every side of this is really ugly.

 

Her second job (unfortunately happened upon what it was because people are just posting it) absolutely wasn't appropriate for a spokesperson of a company that is geared towards kids and families. If it broke a rule in her contract--which I assume it did--then they had every right to fire her. The timing of her firing is terrible, but they can't bend rules for her just because of these circumstances.

 

But at the same time, would they have found out what that second job was if it wasn't for the people harassing her? Probably not. Nintendo should've put a stop to the harassment from the beginning, but they didn't. We don't know the extent of what happened behind the scenes, but from the outside it looked like they did absolutely nothing to help her. It's really disappointing to see that from a company that has been around as long as them.

[TzuVee]

So basically they accused her of not wanting young girls to be sexualized? Is that why she's called a cancerous bitch? Gamers, ladies and gentleman.

 

 

I just skimmed over it tbh. Wait...

I am so fucking confused now? So did they dislike her at first for assuming she doesn't want sexualization of young girls then another group came and found out about her essay then they raged? I kinda regret clicking this lol.

 

she is a pedophile that got called out for it, hardly harressed

the Wayne Foundation, which fights against child abuse wrote to Nintendo about it but she wasn't sacked because of that which in itself is BS

 

but because she moonlighted in a second job using an account linked to Nintendo

 

this is some of the pedo stuff she has twitted

 

 

 

link to proof that she wasn't harrassed and in fact tried to get people to harress her

 

https://medium.com/@nuckable/on-the-manufacturing-of-outrage-17b9e810c358#.46t7a9v84

 

 

this is what got her fired as a PR for Nintendo a company that has an image of being wholesome

 

https://twitter.com/alisonrapp/status/696156953186340864

https://twitter.com/alisonrapp/status/692919999254695937

https://twitter.com/alisonrapp/status/674808650595110912

https://twitter.com/alisonrapp/status/675135327141498880

[Sweet Black]

What was her 2nd job

[blank_stare]

What was her 2nd job

Cam girl, Web cam girls. Those girls/women that like to show stuff through Webcam.