South African game developer, Danny Day, the maker of Desktop Dungeons, decided to use his public platform on social media to talk about how catering toward hardcore PC gaming enthusiasts with high-end PC ports of former console exclusives is encouraging the growth of Men’s Rights Activists, misogynists and #GamerGate.

Archives of Danny Day’s Twitter conversations and arguments with gamers reveals that Danny feels as if companies pushing for higher specs in software is the equivalent of opening the door for MRAs and #GamerGate.

Reddit user B-Volleyball-Ready on Kotaku In Action archived the timeline of Danny’s discussions in order to capture the relevant parts of the Twitter outbursts. Danny started by saying…

“PC gamers can now play at 512fps and 2673×21111122!” Do you want MRAs? Because this is how you get MRAs. “Men’s Rights Activist” whiny shitbags that think feminism is bad and men are the real downtrodden ones. Wastes of calories, drown in glue.”

The most recent console exclusive to arrive on PC was Platinum Games’ Bayonetta, with improved frame-rate performance and 4K resolution support, along with added SSAO for stunning new ambient occlusion rendering, and enhanced shadow mapping.

The PC port of Bayonetta provided PC gamers with a rendition of the game that just wasn’t technologically possible on the far inferior hardware of the PS3 or Xbox 360 when the game released eight years ago. In result of being a far better looking and far better performing release on PC, Bayonetta has endured a great deal of positive feedback from the gaming community, and a lot of PC gamers have praised Sega for properly porting the game to PC and taking advantage of the incomparably powerful hardware that can only be found on a PC gaming rig.

Catering to the Glorious PCMR has already netted Sega nearly 50,000 in sales since re-releasing the game on April 11th, according to Steam Spy. Positive word of mouth and a cheap price will likely continue to push sales.

Danny Day has an issue with this, though, claiming that this perpetuates and encourages a culture of misogyny and MRAs…

“Wait, just in case you’re serious: Via the PC “master race” bullshit, kotakuinaction, gamergate and misogynist gamer dick measuring. “ […] I do not like MRAs, so if we had better reporting around ports instead of fostering hardware divas, maybe things’d be less shit? I am a goddamn dev and I’m telling you that obsession with PC hardware purism let’s the bad people pretend they’re your friends.”

Danny began complaining about his mentions on Twitter being occupied by MRAs.

He also complained about the PC Master Race, taking aim at hardcore gamers who use the moniker like those on the PCMR sub-Reddit or actor Terry Crews, who announced he joined the PCMR on a Facebook post.

Danny states…

“MRAs seem to be weirdly comfortable in the PC gamer communities that need messaging of their superiority to other gamers. Can you use your hardware to its full potential without a Nazi moniker? Isn’t all hardware playing a game at full potential, res regardless? I think the tendency of PC hardware obsessed dick measurers to be friendly towards MRAs is weird. Most players don’t do that.”

Danny goes on to say that praising the numbers and advancements “weirds” him out, and that by focusing on these numbers it makes gaming hostile and keeps people out of gaming, even though it was the numbers and graphical advancements that actually drew Terry Crews and his son into gaming…

“Its the breathless fantasy of games “coming to the right place” and finally getting fast enough to be good… Weirds me out. Because those same games were bad on slower console, lol. Its the same double standard of covet the sexual woman/denigrate the slut. “MRAs and gamergaters can fuck off and not buy my games 🙂 Devs don’t have to cater to shitty humans because they’re “customers”. “[…] Breathlessly leading with bullshit numbers in reporting reinforces divisions that make gaming hostile and unwelcoming.”

In a separate set of tweets, Danny Day does say that he does like Bayonetta but that sites that encourage talking about specs, refresh rates, resolution and the evolution of gaming technology are just “encouraging” Men’s Rights Activists…

“*whispers* I like Bayonetta. *keeps whispering* I also think caring about super high refresh rates/resolutions is weird as hell. “Yes, I think that people who write breathlessly only about how many pixels a port can do are encouraging the kind of stupid that makes MRAs.”

Danny continued to argue, but also told people to stop harassing him about the comments he made, given that a lot of people have been asking him to back up his statements with some sort of statistical analysis or figure showing that improving video game frame-rates, resolution and graphics lure in and reinforce MRAs, or what the actual connection is to #GamerGate.

Given Danny’s stance on higher specs allegedly being tools used to recruit MRAs and #GamerGate types, does this mean Microsoft is catering toward #GamerGate with the Project Scorpio’s 4K resolution at 60fps?

(Main image courtesy of 741DAN)