Female players are often treated sexistly and discriminated against in various video games. Time and again, women report that their random teammates deliberately ruin their gaming experience and insult them just for being women. A player experienced this in Helldivers 2, who until now actually had a positive impression of the community of the cooperative shooter.
What does the player report? The Helldivers player LogicalShockwave reports in a post on Reddit about a negative experience she had in the shooter. According to her, a group of players deliberately tried to ruin her gaming experience after they heard her voice in the voice chat.
“They treated me like an equal until they heard my voice. Then the spawn killing started, throwing me into enemy hordes, refusing to respawn me for as long as possible, and running away from me whenever I tried to regroup.“
Furthermore, unpleasant words were apparently used, but LogicalShockwave did not want to give details about what was said. Additionally, one of the players had a racist name.
Moreover, the player explained that she could not report her tormentors because they never wrote in the text chat but only communicated via microphone. Overall, she was disappointed with the experience.
The first negative experience in Helldivers, but not in gaming?
What does the player say about women’s experiences in gaming? LogicalShockwave explains at the beginning of her post that she has praised Helldivers 2 a lot lately because she felt safe using the voice chat as a woman. That is not the case in other games. There, she feels rather insecure.
Still, LogicalShockwave emphasizes in her post that despite this negative experience, she has a positive impression of the Helldivers community: “Despite everything, I am still impressed by the Helldivers community. Everyone else was absolutely great, and I have met some really nice people.”
What women experience almost daily in gaming: The negative treatment that women experience in gaming daily is a recurring topic that we have also reported on at MeinMMO.
- A female player was insulted so harshly in Destiny 2 that she had to take a break.
- A Twitch streamer was insulted multiple times in Valorant.
- A LoL pro was fired from his team for sexist comments towards a female teammate.
There have even been experiments where men played with a female voice and were also insulted with misogynistic terms.
“We are all brothers and sisters”
This is how the Helldivers community reacts: Some players make it clear in the comments on Reddit that they do not condone such behavior.
The user BappoElPollo writes, for example: “We Divers do not tolerate such vile behavior towards other Divers, no matter who or what they are. We are all brothers and sisters, with a common goal and a common enemy.” For this comment, he received over 3,500 upvotes.
Another user also expresses supportive words and posts a picture of his Helldiver with the hug emote: “A hug of support for you to fight against this undemocratic behavior.”
Another player explains in best Helldivers manner: “The only thing that matters under the armor is a heart for democracy. My regiment admiral even addresses us with gender-neutral terms like hero, patriot, and cannon fodder.”
More about Helldivers 2: After just two days, the robots are back in Helldivers 2 – with an even larger army and a goal.
