r/KotakuInAction: The Gamergate Hub and Its 2018 Founder Shutdown
2014–2018
r/KotakuInAction, Reddit's central Gamergate hub, was never permanently banned; in July 2018 its founder briefly privated it calling it 'infested with racism and sexism,' but Reddit admins restored it within about an hour.
What happened
r/KotakuInAction (KiA) was created in 2014 as the central Reddit hub for Gamergate, nominally about 'ethics in video game journalism' but widely documented by journalists as a coordination point for harassment campaigns targeting women and marginalized people in games media. Vice characterized it as a space where 'sexism and racism' drove community cohesion and helped movements like Gamergate 'thrive and multiply.'
Its most notable disruption was self-inflicted and brief. On July 12, 2018 the subreddit's founder, the moderator known as u/david-me, unilaterally set it to private, stripped the other moderators' privileges, and posted that KiA is 'one of the many cancerous growths that have infiltrated reddit' and 'infested with racism and sexism.' The blackout locked out its roughly 100,000 subscribers.
The shutdown lasted under an hour: another moderator contacted Reddit's admins, who restored the subreddit and said david-me's actions were under investigation. Critically — and unlike the other communities in this archive — r/KotakuInAction has never been quarantined or permanently banned and remains active; this entry documents the Gamergate hub's history and its brief founder-led shutdown rather than a Reddit ban. The harm associated with it is the documented role of Gamergate in sustained harassment, doxxing, and threats against women and minorities in the games industry and press.
Impact
A rare case of a community's own founder trying to shut down the Gamergate hub he created — overruled by Reddit — that crystallized the debate over whether the platform should host a community tied to organized harassment.