The Xbox guru’s outrage was sparked by a video of a streamer being insulted by fellow Halo Infinite players.

 

 

Seamus Blackley, one of the designers of the first Xbox console, has responded to a video posted by a female Halo Infinite player that has quickly gone viral, in which she is heard hurling gendered insults at her team.

“It is possible to clean these [online] environments up [from harassing behaviour]. Let’s do it.” – Seamus Blackley

After seeing a video posted on social media of streamer Grenade Queen, Blackley stressed that this “needs to be stopped”. The former designer explained that it would take the cooperation of gamers, developers and console manufacturers to bring about change. “This wasn’t the future for Xbox Live we envisioned,” he added.

After sharing the video with the world, Grenade Queen added the following comment: “No woman should have to deal with this if they’re having 1 rough game against decent people…” According to her, what we see in the video is just a fraction of all the abuse she has received in the Xbox gaming community.

In Grenade Queen’s video, which now has more than 600,000 views, you can see two members of her team start insulting her, saying the game is “not for her” and that she would be better off stripping on Twitch rather than Xbox streaming. “Did you notice that Master Chief has never been a woman?” one of them adds.

Blackley concluded by saying that this is nothing new and that he knows that those involved are angry because no one has done anything to address the situation for a long time. “It only motivates me more [to clean up this online environment],” he said. “It needs to be done.”

Source: Twitter

This wasn’t the future for @xbox live we envisioned. As a community and with the help of @Microsoft this needs to be highlighted and stopped. It will take teamwork between players, devs, and console manufacturers to change this and it’s time. It’s past time. https://t.co/hVPHDvESVP

— Seamus Blackley (@SeamusBlackley) December 20, 2021