The organizers of the Game Developers Choice Awards announced today that they have rescinded the Pioneer Award for Atari founder Nolan Bushnell, and announced the award will not be given this year entirely.

The decision follows a day of outcry after GDC organizers announced that Bushnell, 74, had been tapped for the GDCA’s lifetime achievement honor. News accounts and histories over the past several years have documented a history of workplace misconduct and sexist behavior toward women by Bushnell, during Atari’s early days.

In a statement this morning, GDC said its awards committee “made the decision not to give out a Pioneer Award for this year’s event, following additional feedback from the community.

“They believe their picks should reflect the values of today’s game industry and will dedicate this year’s award to honor the pioneering and unheard voices of the past.”

The Pioneer Award is for “individuals who developed a breakthrough technology, game concept, or gameplay design at a crucial juncture in video game history” according to its official site. Nine have been conferred since 2008, none of them women.

Bushnell founded Atari in 1972 and installed the first coin-operated video game, Pong, shortly thereafter. He presided over the company’s rise to dominate the early generation of home console gaming before selling it off and founding what is today the Chuck E. Cheese line of restaurants.

But after GDC announced the honor, many developers called attention to profiles of Bushnell in those times, where he is depicted as conducting company business from a hot tub and indulging in an aura of power and money.

.@ubm The Pioneer award at #gdc2018 should represent all the women who did not have the opportunity to have a seat at a table because they wouldn't take a seat at the hottub at @atari. #notnolan #MeToo — Molly Proffitt (@bitterwinsome) January 31, 2018

Proffitt, the chief executive of Ker-Chunk Games, an independent games developer with a focus on women’s empowerment, was referring to incidents described in The Ultimate History of Video Games, a 2001 oral history in which Bushnell and Atari are discussed at length.

Al Alcorn, who designed Pong and was involved in the creation of the Atari 2600, described Bushnell as calling for a female assistant from a jacuzzi to bring him papers and then trying to lure her into it. Gillian Smith, an assistant professor for game design at Worcester Polytechnic Institute, tweeted excerpts from that and other books under the hashtag #notnolan yesterday, after GDC announced Bushnell would receive the Pioneer Award at the 2018 Game Developers Choice Awards.

Opponents of honoring Bushnell also repeatedly cited a 2015 story from the San Francisco Chronicle, which quoted a 1976 profile in the same newspaper. It mentions Bushnell posing by the same hot tub in his Los Gatos, Calif. home beside “a statuesque female friend,” and offering this thought: “Some ladies feel comfortable around me, and some don’t. I find the aura of power and money is very intimidating to an awful number of girls.”

.@ubm “Some ladies feel comfortable around me, and some don’t,” he told The Chronicle, in one of several swagger-filled quotes. “I find the aura of power and money is very intimidating to an awful number of girls.” from https://t.co/05ovdGFevs Time's. Up. #notnolan #GDC18 #metoo — Jen Allaway (@AllawayJ) January 30, 2018

And in the 2010 book “Replay: The History of Video Games” (excerpted by Gamasutra) Ray Kassar, Atari’s chief executive from 1978 to 1983, described inheriting an unruly culture from Bushnell and trying to bring order to it as an executive from more traditional industries.

“When I arrived there on the first day, I was dressed in a business suit and a tie and I met Nolan Bushnell. He had a T-shirt on. The T-shirt said: ‘I love to fuck.’” Kassar said. “That was my introduction to Atari.”

Yesterday and overnight, the #notnolan outcry gathered steam, with some appending the #metoo hashtag for the movement calling attention to long-running sexual harrassment, misconduct and other abuses by men in power, in and out of the workplace.

@ubm "Bushnell directed his design head George Faraco to cover the two joysticks for the game with pink silicon domes. They looked like breasts, and Atari wasn’t all that subtle about that. By pushing the breasts, the players could chase each other" #notnolan #timesup #MeToo pic.twitter.com/KYSKoej9cy — Lisette Titre-Montgomery (@zette16) January 31, 2018

.@ubm can you explain to me why in the year of #metoo, you would give the Pioneer Award at #GDC2018 to Nolan Bushnell? Whose engineers named their code projects after women in the office they wanted to sleep with? Who thinks women play 'chat rooms' as games? pic.twitter.com/BWIqmyJwaf — Jen Allaway (@AllawayJ) January 30, 2018

Polygon has reached out to Bushnell for comment and will update this story with any reply received.

Game Developers Conference 2018 is March 19-March 23 in San Francisco, and the Game Developers Choice Awards are Wednesday, March 21.

Update: Bushnell replied via Twitter early this afternoon.