A Destiny 2 player who doxxed and harassed a Bungie community manager has been found liable for nearly $500,o00 in damages and fees, in a lovely example of fucking around and finding out.
According to the official Washington State court order, shared on Twitter by paralegal Kathryn Tewson, Jesse James Comer (who Tewson calls a âracist shitstain of a human being,â and girl, preach) went on a doxxing and harassment campaign of a Bungie community manager not long after that CM (who we will not name here) highlighted the work of a Black Destiny 2 creator.
https://twitter.com/embed/status/1679245991692869632
The court documents state that Comer, who lives in West Virginia, added a new number to an anonymous texting and calling service before leaving a âhideous, bigoted voicemailâ on what appears to be the Bungie employeeâs personal phone. Comer ârepeatedly asked that the [employee] convince Bungie to create options in its game in which only persons of color would be killed.â Comer then started leaving similarly aggressive and racist voicemails for the Bungie employeeâs wife.
But since men with fragile egos and too much time to spend on the internet know no bounds, Comer didnât stop there. He escalated his harassment campaign by showing the Bungie employee that he knew where they lived. He ordered a âvirtually inedible, odiferous pizzaâ from Dominoâs, set it to cash on delivery, and put in the notes that the delivery driver âknock at least five timesâ because the person receiving the delivery would be wearing headphones.
Comer then bragged about his behavior in a Steam group called âterr0rgang,â which âmaintains a set of sound files and noises labeled as âear rapeâ and permits its users to utilize these files as a part of their terror campaigns.â Comer used those audio files in voicemails just two hours after sending the Bungie employee and their wife the pizza.
According to the court order, âBungie was forced to take expensive measures to protect the Does from the threat posed by Comer (who, at that point, remained unknown and anonymous).â The company sent out âexecutive protectionâ within an hour of the âpizza attack,â and hired investigators and outside counsel to try and identify Comer.
Everything Bungie did to protect its employee was expensive, and now Comer has to pay the price according to this court order. This isnât just an important case for Bungie and its employee but also for victims of online harassment at large. As Tewson wrote on Twitter: âThe law moves slowly, frankly; much more slowly than either technology or culture. With this win, we helped to close that gap in some significant ways.â
May this be a warning to all the racist fuckboys in video games: Be prepared to pay up.
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