Nintendo says online harassment played no role in decision to part ways with female employee

Nintendo of America has denied that a months-long Internet-led harassment campaign against one of its marketing employees played a role in the company’s decision to fire her.

Nintendo released a statement Wednesday afternoon, one that identified the staffer by name and condemned the harassment that had been levied against her.

The employee, Alison Rapp, had been the subject of an online crusade to essentially have her removed from her position.

She worked in a division of Nintendo that had a hand in localizing Japanese content for the American market. Her harassers, which included followers of Internet message boards such as 4Chan and Reddit, as well as a white supremacist website, zeroed in on her progressive social media beliefs and blamed them for what they deemed as unnecessary alterations to Western editions of Nintendo games.

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The Seattle-based Rapp on Wednesday stated via Twitter that her and her family had come under attack, so much so that she had been speaking with law enforcement. Rapp’s harassers dug deep into her past, including posting excerpts of college essays on provocative topics such as gender, sex and child pornography.

Reached via email, Rapp declined to comment beyond what she has posted on social media. She said on Wednesday she had been terminated after it was declared that she was no longer a “good, safe representative” of Nintendo.

“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 of America said in a statement. The company added that she was relieved from her duties after it had been discovered that Rapp had been “holding a second job in conflict with Nintendo’s corporate culture.”

Rapp has admitted to moonlighting at an unspecified job under a fake name in order to pay off student loans.

“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,” read the statement. “We wish Ms. Rapp well in her future endeavors.”

The video game industry has long struggled with harassment of its female employees, including threats of rape and death. It’s an ugly underbelly of the gaming community that hit the mainstream in 2014 when Internet bullies organized under the “gamergate” hashtag.

Those sympathetic to the gamergate cause often frame the conversation as one about ethics in game media, but it’s largely driven by a fear that intellectual criticism of the medium will result in a politically correct makeover of it.

Rapp has singled out gamergate supporters as leading the attacks against her.

Rapp’s firing has put Nintendo at the center of online criticism, as many view it as the company capitulating to Internet harassers. The Anita Sarkeesian-led Feminist Frequency, which created the “Tropes vs. Women in Video Games” series, tweeted that for a company not to support an employee in the midst of online attacks was “unconscionable.”

A number of independent video game developers also spoke out on social media, with one creator even declaring that he would not be bringing his next game to Nintendo’s Wii U. Another, William Pugh, a designer known best for his work on “The Stanley Parable,” wrote that he was “incredibly disappointed” with a company he had admired since childhood.

Through it all, Rapp has asked friends and fans to continue to support Nintendo, and today championed the release of Nintendo’s first-ever mobile app, “Miitomo.”

Follow me @toddmartens