BioWare Writer Faces Threats Against Her Children

A BioWare writer, Jennifer Hepler has quit her job at the video game development company as a result of threats being made against her and her children. The threats, according to Hepler, are the result of unpopular changes being made to BioWare’s Dragon Age that came about with its sequel Dragon Age 2.

Forum posts, phone calls, and emails began to appear and all of them were threatening Hepler and other employees at BioWare becuase of the game. Security at EA (BioWare’s parent company) showed Hepler the threats that were seen on forums. Hepler told Metro:

I was shown a sample of the forum posts by EA security. And it included graphic threats to kill my children on their way out of school to show them that they should have been aborted at birth rather than have to have me as a mother.

Some people absolutely loved the changes made to Dragon Age which resulted in female and LGBT characters being included among the list of playable characters. However, the same change that Hepler received support for also brought the BioWare writer hate mail.

Although these are video games, people have seemingly become more violent surrounding changes made to popular games. Only last month, a developer for Black Ops 2 began receiving threatening messages as a result of the changes made to the game’s array of weapons.

It appears as though the threats being made against Hepler can be traced back to an interview she gave six years ago in which she stated that she did not like combat in games. This statement was referenced as one of the reasons for the messages which were spurred on recently by the Dragon Age 2 changes.

Sure, people can be unhappy about changes made to a video game especially when it has to do with a current social issue, but threats are taking things way too far.