• Hey, guest user. Hope you're enjoying NeoGAF! Have you considered registering for an account? Come join us and add your take to the daily discourse.

Zoe Quinn #meToo / Alec Holowka suicide -- Update: Article questions ZQ's account of events (link in OP)

raduque

Member
I was going to make this joke: Obviously you guys missed the part about "7 hour work days." Can you imagine the horror?

But I guess he edited that part out once it was pointed out how pathetic it was.
Oh, the horror! SEVEN HOURS A DAY!

Shit.

My boss works 12-13 hours and his wife literally just gave birth to his third kid. I work 9-11 hours, and we'll probably be switching to 4 10s soon, which means 12-13 hour days for me.

This piss-poor excuse for a human being "indie dev" would literally die if he had to do my job. Physical labor, oh teh noes!
 

Dr. Claus

Vincit qui se vincit
Oh, the horror! SEVEN HOURS A DAY!

Shit.

My boss works 12-13 hours and his wife literally just gave birth to his third kid. I work 9-11 hours, and we'll probably be switching to 4 10s soon, which means 12-13 hour days for me.

This piss-poor excuse for a human being "indie dev" would literally die if he had to do my job. Physical labor, oh teh noes!

I work similar hours, but I only get paid a stipend of around 18k a year. I get paid less than minimum wage and work, on average, 60 work weeks.

This little spineless cunt needs to learn an honest days hard work.
 

raduque

Member



Well, fuck. Guess RPS is off my reading list forever. Fuck those guys.

"Ladies and Gentlemen"

We are the thing of shapes to come
Your freedom's not free and dumb
This Depression is Great
The Deformation Age, they know my name
Waltzing to scum and base and
Married to the pain
Bang we want it
Bang we want it
Bang bang bang bang bang
You came to see the MOBscene
I know it isn't your scene
It's better than a sex scene and it's
So fucking obscene, obscene yeah.

Forgot the most important part, and (probably) the Twatter rallying cry:

Be Obscene
Be, Be Obscene
Be Obscene, baby
, and not heard.

BTW, saw Marilyn Manson and Rob Zombie in the Twins of Evil concert tour, and it was fucking amazing.
 

CrustyBritches

Gold Member
Exclusive: Zoe Quinn's allegations are falling apart...
On August 28, 2019, game developer and activist Zoe Quinn issued a multi-post Twitter statement detailing abuse allegedly suffered at the hands of former partner and fellow indie developer Alec Holowka. On August 29, the Night in the Woods development team cut ties with Holowka, and within 48 hours, he had committed suicide. The same day as Holowka’s suicide, Zoe Quinn’s Twitter account was deleted, returning shortly thereafter under a protected lock which enabled only a few select people to access the tweets.

A source with access to Quinn’s locked Twitter account has provided The Post Millennial with important history which sheds light on the developer’s time with the now-deceased Alec Holowka.

-The Post Millennial
tl;dr: Chelsea Van Valkenberg(aka Zoe Quinn) is a crackhead for Twitter and posted many times daily during her stay with Alec Holowka. Additionally, she went shopping for craft materials, went to indie meetups, and even did a podcast interview. Curiously contradicting.
 
Last edited:

Hudo

Member
Scott Benson, keeps talking. On kickstarter today:

Alec died last weekend. We found out via twitter, which seems appropriate as that's how I first met Alec. We don't have any other info to share here about it.

I covered most things pretty thoroughly in our last update. There was no dramatic moment we were involved in after that. We just found out the next day that he was gone. The people near Alec tried very hard to keep him alive. Bethany and I weren't in Alec's immediate support group, and indeed when the allegations came out and I approached him about them he quickly disappeared. But others he was close to fought very hard, because they loved him. In the Alec was the only one who could make decisions for Alec.

As I discussed in the last update, my relationship with Alec was very complicated. My time with him was sometimes good, sometimes very hard, sometimes actively harmful. People ask me how I feel and what I feel is angry. Just angry. I'm angry at how last week went. I'm angry at what Alec did to others, and to me. I'm angry with how he handled it. I'm angry that we're left to clean up a mess he left behind. I'm angry we've had to deal with this in public, and that we've been made such a focus of this story. I'm angry with Alec. For a lot of reasons I'm angry with Alec. And I'm angry he's gone.

I wrote a very personal and very angry thing about my relationship with Alec, and about his abusive patterns that repeated in ways I never knew about until the past 10 days. It's something of a closer and more personal, unredacted version of some things I wrote last update. It also contains some secret history of NITW development that you never knew about, and how that fit into his patterns. It's not a particularly rosy image of Alec, but it's at least honest as far as my experience with him goes and that's the best I can do. It was painful to write. It's painful to link to. But you deserve to see it if you want to. I wrote it because I needed to get it out, and because I know several people who wanted to talk about their similar experiences with Alec but fear doing so in public. So I stepped up I guess. I also wrote it for people that may find themselves in this same situation, as I had been several times even before I met Alec.

Since his death I've talked to... geez, I don't know how many people about him. People who knew him 15 years ago, people who knew him 2 weeks ago, and everywhere in between. Many of us were surprised the things we experienced with him weren't unique to us, and had indeed started long before with others. Alec was doing the things he did going back a very, very long time. And I'm heartbroken about this. And I've talked to dozens of people who have experienced all these things with other people. There are so many of us.

Bethany and I aren't especially sentimental about death. I think just because we've both seen so much of it in our lives. Death and ruin, often in very sad ways. I don't have a lot of great examples in my life of people dying peacefully in their sleep. Suicides, car crashes, drug overdoes, accidents. From a young age, when the kid down the street drowned in the creek behind our neighborhood and I showed the rescue teams where they might find him. For a long time his mother wouldn't clean the window that held a single handprint he left behind. I remember slowly understanding what that meant at age 9. After a while you get a bit less sensitive to the shock is what I'm saying. I'm not at grief yet. Grief will come without warning some afternoon in 2 months when I'm installing baseboards in the house and I suddenly buckle and cry hard for an hour.

All this to say that Bethany and I don't tend to talk about dead friends and family as if they're still there with us, hurt by what we night reveal. We save that consideration for the family. I've wanted to be honest about Alec. And that honesty is sometimes harsh.

Alec struggled with his mental health. I was open about that, admirably. And some of the more difficult aspects of him can be attributed in some way to those things he struggled with. He also did harm to a good number of people, harm that doesn't need any mental health struggle to create it. He could also be really great. It depends on who you were and how/when you knew him. I'm certain many people remember Alec as a sweet and gentle guy. I know that many people remember Alec as a tormentor. Was Alec "good"? People are complicated. I don't know if I'm "good". What's "good"? Alec was loved by his family and many others. Those people are the ones left hurting now.

A lot of people have a hard time grasping that you can care about someone and also be angry at them for what they did to you and others. That you can be honest about what they did to you while still wanting them to be better. I'm angry as hell at Alec. I had a painful history with him, and a distant present. But losing him still hurts. Because he meant something. The pain is a sign it all meant something. To quote Mae, I want this to hurt. It's going to hurt for a while.

I won't be checking comments on this post anytime soon. I'm at a point right now where I can talk about it but not to where I can engage people about it. Just writing this stuff at all is hard, hard work right now, let alone fielding questions and comments. We'll be back and have more to say in our next update, when we have some distance on this.

Final thoughts: if you're in an abusive situation, whether at work or in a relationship, we stand with you. If you are wrestling with mental health issues, we also stand with you. We've certainly been there. We stand with you, for what that is worth. If you're having suicidal ideas, there are resources out there for you. People who will talk with you. No matter what you've done, no matter how hopeless it seems. A quick google will give you crisis hotlines and other resources available in your area. Don't hesitate if you need them. They literally exist to help you. Please stick around.

Thanks everyone. Here's to better days, and to life.

-scott
The Suicide of Alec Holowka, starring Scott Benson
 

cormack12

Gold Member
The new evidence uncovered is not exculpatory. However, it does reveal that Zoe Quinn is no way credible.

The Post Millennial reached out to Zoe Quinn to explain the apparent inaccuracies and inconsistencies in the public statement but was unable to reach Quinn for comment at this time.

 

cormack12

Gold Member
Wow, looks like Post Milennial is full of internalized mysoginy for even thinking about it.

I like that because it's what games journalists and the other shysters do as well. They write a shitty article, send a tweet and if they don't hear back they run the story with that little disclaimer.

This even deserves a separate thread, IMO.

Yeah, I'm not sure how the mods feel about another ZQ thread on page #1 though. Maybe see how it develops or feel free to split it out?
 
Last edited:

Naru

Member
So did they arrest her already? Or at least bring her in for questioning? I guess if no one presses charges nothing at all will happen?
 

buizel

Banned

Deserves a seperate thread.

The funny thing about that article is that a woman wrote it. Lol.

The funny thing is more women than men have spoken out against Zoe. Of course more woman defend her, but that's just her close knit group of 3rd wave feminists, not actual people who go outside and you're likely to meet.

I think women hate liars more than men. Not hard to imagine why.

I find women in general are much more 'competitive' with other women. Or at least, to put it bluntly, are more outspoken about how much they hate other women
 
Last edited:

Scopa

The Tribe Has Spoken
“Gaming” websites:

5D541nx.gif
 
Exclusive: Zoe Quinn's allegations are falling apart...

tl;dr: Chelsea Van Valkenberg(aka Zoe Quinn) is a crackhead for Twitter and posted many times daily during her stay with Alec Holowka. Additionally, she went shopping for craft materials, went to indie meetups, and even did a podcast interview. Curiously contradicting.

So while Zoe was in this horribly abusive relationship, she kept love-tweeting Alec while hyping up the game they were working on together. People like her often project their own abusive behavior onto other people and the only reason why she didn't say anything about their relationship back then was simply because there was no notoriety to gain from it. Gaming's #metoo moment turns out to be another social media witch-hunt orchestrated by self-serving people who are making these accusations not for justice, but for personal gain.

Oh and by the way, did that game they were so furiously working on, It's Not Okay Cupid, ever materialize? Of course not, because Zoe Quinn doesn't have the skill or creative talent to finish it by herself. She is not a game developer, but a succubus who lets other people do the dirty work while she tends to her twitter wall grabing all the public attention.

Of course, the usual media vultures like Laurie Penny were already salivating at the prospect of another salacious scandal, doesn't matter how many bodies keep piling up so long as the twitter accusations keep coming:

The response to the death of Alec Holowka throws this double standard into razor-sharp relief. The harassment of Quinn and others has nothing to do with concern for Holowka and his family and everything to do with making examples of women and queer people who dare to speak out.

F*ck you Laurie Penny for siding with a known abuser for the sake of keeping your self-serving narrative alive through such hollow unfounded assumptions. Is Zoe Quinn's fake twitter persona really more important than the tragic end of another person? Where is the justice for her numerous ex-lovers who were dropped like a hot potato once they served their use in furthering Quinn's fake gaming career? Where is the justice for Eron, Alec and all of her other victims? Where were you when Eron's desperate abuse drove him to come out with the Zoe post?

The fact that these twitter accusations are being scrutinized is because from an outside perspective, the accused has a right to be heard as much as the accuser. This has nothing to do with "making an example of women and queer people", it has everything to do with upholding what is just. Doesn't matter if you're a woman or gay, justice is blind and only cares about the facts. If you were truly concerned about the well-being of the victims, you'd make sure these accusations would get a proper trial. Power-hungry self-serving c*nts on twatter latching on to whatever moral panic is served as the soup du jour on social media should never be made judge, jury and executioner and Alec's tragic end is exactly the reason why.

Do people seriously believe that I should take every dumb tweet and social media post as a matter of fact? As a "journalist", Laurie Penny should know better, but we all know that these people are not "journalists", they are lifestyle bloggers selling an ideological brand for financial gain because otherwise they have nothing of substance to say. Get the f*ck off social media and take a look at the real world, but we all know you're trapped in there because your own mirror image frightens you.

For all the hollow virtue-signaling, the endless campaigns against harassment and the emotional pleas for human empathy, in the end it is your toxic cancel culture and ideological zealotry that came at the expense of a human's life. I hope Alec's unfortunate fate will hang over Zoe's head like the sword of Damocles. His life and well-being wasn't worth the 5 minutes of e-fame she tried to squeeze out of this.

It is an unfortunate truth that "dead men can’t tweet back", but it is equally true that we will never forget.

Edit: Thank you kind internet stranger. It is much appreciated, although feeling undeserved for merely stating what should be common sense.
 
Last edited:
Yeah there's something deeply wrong when Russia is the one telling us not to engage in mob justice. Is this what we've come to?

Probably saying it because it could cause a revolution against Putin if they hear what the West does on Social Media.

Russia aren't saying it to help anyyone outside of their own government.
 
Those timeline discrepancies seem to outright prove some key fabrications. She wasn't held captive by Alec, at least not the way she described. She didn't sneak away unbeknownst to Alec with the help of a room mate. In fact she was publicly tweeting about the move several days in advance and even @'d Alec hours before her flight. So that's just a straight up lie.

The other positive interactions aren't as concrete. It's not unimaginable to conceive of an abuse victim putting up a positive public front. How enthusiastically positive some of the tweets are is definitely suspect. Although, a lot of them are promoting a joint project so she would have a reason to be like that.

Overall it's pretty damning stuff. Some outright fabrications proven and other evidence that seems to suggest major exaggerations. This will be hand waved by the woke side because "there are no perfect victims." Which is true, nobodies perfect, but there still has to be some baseline standard of establishing a person's credibility. At a certain point, if there's enough credible evidence to suggest so, you have to admit there's reason to doubt someone's claims. Otherwise you're just in a cult.

This goes beyond the type of stuff it's reasonable to mis-remember, as well. To go from "I just barely managed to escape with my life, only by the good graces of my other room mate." to "lol I was actually publicly tweeting about the move and @'d Alec" is a fairly big yikes.
 

Whitecrow

Banned
Of course, its always better to tell a story on twitter and gain followers that going to the police and fill an accusation.
ZQ, if not a compulsive liar, is extremely mentally challenged animal.
 
So, given that the Post Millenial article is a good source of debunking claims, we can sort of set up a timeline from sources.
Luckily, I'm one of those nerds that likes data, structures and tables.

ROUGH DATEZOE'S CLAIMSPOST MILLENNIAL FINDINGSCONCLUSION
PRE-MARCH 2012 (Zoe goes on to say this she meets Alec "one month after the assault", so we can place this around about February-ish)Abuse from an Unnamed Assailant [zoe notes: paragraph 2 & 3] No comment in the PM article on thisNo conclusion - zoe doesn't name this abuser, and quickly mentions that "this isn't about him. I've forgiven him." We can ignore this claim, for now for the purpose of this Alec case. PM doesn't mention it.
START OF MARCH 2012Give that Zoe's notes gives us a rough date of the previous abuse at Feburary, she meets Alec "one month later", placing that around march. We can conclude that they start chatting around here.PM found multiple snippets from a podcast in which Zoe goes on to explain how she met alec, via DMs on twatter.
MARCH 2012Zoe doesn't specify when she gears up to go to Winnpeg to live with Alec in the zoe notes source.PM found, from archived tweets, that Zoe was preparing to go to Winnipeg around MarchWe can conclude that Zoe prepared to leave Toronto for Winnipeg in March
MARCH END / APRIL START 2012As above, zoe doesn't specify when she moves to WinnipegUsing dozens of archived tweets from Zoe's twitter, PM very reliably places the move date around this timeWe can conclude that Zoe moves from Toronto to Winnipeg around the start of April (if not the end of March)
APRIL START TO MID APRIL 2012During this period, zoe claims a bulk of things done by Alec in the zoe notes [paragraph 7] Part of Zoe's claims during this period is that Alec isolated her and locked her away from the 3 unnamed friends during this period.
Around this time, Zoe and Alec appear together on a Podcast, explaining how they met on twitter, their relationship, and their project Not Ok Cupid (never released). Obviously, no mention of abuse happens on the podcast. Alec mentions that he spent some time on OK Cupid before meeting zoe. Hence the project. There are dozens and dozens of tweets detailing their time through-out april in Winnipeg. Including arranging a meet-up, shopping, and so on.
We can conclude that Alec probably did not shut Zoe away and isolate her, at least for the most part, because they often tweeted about their movements. Assuming the tweets are true, for now.

NOTE: There's alot of say-so about Alec's mental instability (including gossip of his own posted in 2016). We can assume that he wasn't very stable. We can probably assume that the relationship wasn't all that easy, either.
MID APRIL 2012This is around the time (2 weeks later) that zoe would of moved back to Winnipeg after staying with Alec, as they supposedly agreed, according to the zoe notes source [zoe notes: paragraph 3] Zoe would by the ticket there, Alec would by her the ticket back. They were supposed to live in an "indie house" with 3 others (unnamed) this was what they agreed pre-zoe's-departure. She would claim to stay for a full monthThere's no real mention of the 2 week plan in the PM article. We can conclude that she definitely stayed longer than two weeks. What's debatable here is: was that the original plan? Was the "two week" plan a lie?
END OF APRIL/ MAY START 2012This is probably around where Zoe claims to have come back (one month later) using air miles provided to her by a friend, since Alec refused to buy her a flight back as they previously agreed. She claims to have flown back with no mention of other travels. As if escaping.The PM article has screencaps of a tweet dated May 2nd, that details a going to a Winnipeg meet up, then going to Montreal and Toronto (she heads to Toronto on the 4th)By Zoe's tweet, we can conclude that she did travel back to Toronto around a month later. She PROBABLY didn't use a friend's air miles to escape Winnipeg, as she obviously travelled to Montreal as well.
MAY 10th 2012-Is the last known tweet between Alec and Zoe, as detailed in the PM articleI can't conclude much here, apart from they stopped communicating. Could be because of the "amiable break up email" Zoe claimed to have sent after arriving back in Toronto
POST MAY 10th 2012In the zoe notes, she claims that here Alec "banned her from an indie gaming community he ran, banned himself, asked other industry leaders to help him commit suicide"None of this is detailed in the PM Article. But it does mention Alec's mental instability, and other people agreeing that he was suicidal.We can conclude that Alec is capable of lashing out like this given a history of instability.
We can perhaps conclude that the "community" in question is the indie meetup they arranged together called Windiepeg.
GAMERGATE START (earliest account, August 2014 ish, but we don't know what Zoe regards as the start of GG)Zoe claims that multiple people came forward with claims of Alec's abusive behaviour. No mention of this in PM.We can conclude here that, using evidence of Alec's instability, that perhaps some people did contact Zoe about his behaviour. The 3 unnamed friends or one of the ~38 devs attending Windiepeg would be viable candidates
August 28th 2019 (now)Zoe's statement about Alec's alleged abuse. Multiple people back her up in variable degrees, such as Laurie Pennie, and the other devs of Night in the Woods, to a very small degree Alec's sister alsoDuring this phase, Zoe deletes her twitter account only to reactivate it days later as "protected", someone archives lots of tweets and feeds them to PM, as part of the article. The article mentions that many tweets around the period specified in this timeline was DELETED, but managed to get screencapped in a video, sent to PM as part of the article. Alec commits suicide some time after. The vast majority of games news outlets just mention "died"; being unusually respectful. Zoe goes into twitter damage control, deleting tweets from the period with Alec, but she's too slow. The two other devs also delete their accounts, perhaps for the same reason. Though now their accounts are back online [1] [2]

CONCLUDING...
Given the timeline above: I think Quinn moved to Winnipeg to be with Alec and work on Not OK Cupid. I dont think they planned on it just being a 2 week period. I think they had a rough relationship while there, due to Zoe being a megalomaniac and Alec being quite unstable. I think Zoe's claims are inflated, as she is a serial liar. But I don't think it was a very nice relationship. I think Zoe scrounging air miles from a friend to escape is a lie, she returned as part of broader travel. Not OK Cupid was not finished, probably due to Zoe's breaking up with Alec due to email, which he did not take well (as expected). Why did Zoe inflate her claims? Apart from the usual filter of exaggeration and lies that comes with her, I don't think there was a profit motivation. It was more than likely because she wanted to be a part of a bigger, more dramatic narrative of her time in Winnipeg. I think she has a deep issue with trying to see more rough-n-tough than she actually is. I don't think she specifically knew Alec would kill himself and it was a huge shock (as it should be.)

She is actually asshole-to-elbow deep in lies she can't spin quick enough. Like trying to lay down track as she's speeding along.

P.s.
If you're journalist reading this table don't use it, make your own timeline using the same sources plus more, then compared the accounts. This took me a little under an hour... It's your day job. At least until your supervisor has to axe you because the public don't want to read about opinions from 30k-a-year-self-loathing-spin-doctor who's never set foot in an actual work-force.

P.s.s
If there are issues with the timeline, feel free to copypasta it with adjustments! If I have missed someone, or a date is wrong etc, then fix it. It's open to investigation.
 
Top Bottom