Zenimax, the developer of The Elder Scrolls Online (PC, Mac, PS4, Xbox One) is said to have a problem with sexual harassment. At least that was claimed by a sensational tweet from the community manager. However, all of this seemed to be the work of a hacker.
What is the sex scandal at Zenimax about? Last night at 1:40 AM, a tweet caused an uproar among ESO fans. It came from Gina Bruno, the popular community manager of The Elder Scrolls Online. Bruno has been known among fans for years as she regularly appears in dev streams.
In the tweet, however, she announced her departure from Zenimax. The reason: She claimed to have been massively sexually harassed. And by someone from “the very top”. She did not want to name names, but it would have legal consequences.
The truth behind the allegations
What happened next? The story about the alleged sex scandal at Zenimax spread like wildfire and was circulated in forums and on the MMORPG.com site, among others. But soon it was revealed that it was all a huge hoax.
Hacker takes over account and spreads lies: Rather, a hacker had taken over Gina Bruno’s Twitter account and spread these rumors in her name. As a little extra, the hacker also posted racist and sexist comments under Bruno’s name.
Community manager will be back soon: Gina Bruno herself soon announced via a colleague on Twitter that she had been hacked and is actively working on restoring her account. Until then, she asked everyone to please ignore anything she posts on Twitter.
The power of rumor: The case of Gina Bruno’s account hack was quickly clarified, but the initial reactions on Twitter and in the ESO forum show that many people immediately fell for the lie and believed it without verification.
Game developers and sex scandals: After all, this would not be the first sex scandal at a developer. Recently, Riot Games, the developers of LoL, made headlines for this issue.
Riots’ attempts to improve the company’s poor image by specifically offering workshops for women and non-binary people caused even more trouble and led to the dismissal of two Riot employees.
And then there was of course the matter with the designer from ArenaNet, who lost her job due to a Twitter post.
