On Wednesday, a United Nations agency that published a report about "cyber violence against women and girls" formally retracted that report following criticism from the likes of games industry lobbyists and advocates for online abuse victims.

The September 24 report, issued by the International Telecommunication Union, was published on the same day that the United Nations hosted a symposium at its New York headquarters that gathered women from across the world to talk about the Internet's potential as a platform for harassment and abuse. The accompanying report touched on those issues, but its accusations about video games as a broader inspiration for violence included messy citations that failed to back up such assertions.

One lengthy takedown, posted by Jaime King, was able to discredit over 30 percent of the citations in the report. They ranged from circular (the UN citing itself) to dubious (citing Wikipedia) to baffling (just straight-up blank entries). More critics followed, including symposium participant and Crash Override founder Zoe Quinn, who pointed out that the sloppiness of the paper could "kneecap" various efforts to combat online abuse and hate speech. (Quinn declined an interview request from Ars about the report's Wednesday retraction.)

On Tuesday, major games lobbying arm the Entertainment Software Association posted its own critical press release that, among other things, noted the citing of discredited studies such as "The Mark of the Beast: America’s Children Are in Mortal Danger." "ESA strongly supports empowering women and minorities and creating an inclusive digital environment that welcomes all perspectives," ESA CEO and President Michael D. Gallagher wrote. "However, the U.N. does this important issue a great disservice and undercuts its credibility by spreading ridiculous stereotypes and false opinions.”

Ultimately, ITU public information chief Sarah Parkes issued an apology to a Vice Motherboard reporter on Wednesday, the same day that the original paper was taken off the UN's site and replaced with a "currently in revision" notice. (As King noted in his takedown piece, the original report can be found archived here.)

"The big problem was footnoting, which was not up to standard and we very much regret that," Parkes said to Motherboard. Parkes then admitted that some of the report's issues were due to "the terrible scramble around the launch date. It was a hugely busy period for the UN. We apologize very much for the errors and I hope we'll be able to rectify them." She suggested that a revised report would be posted "within two weeks."