UPDATE 17/10/14 12.45pm: The Entertainment Software Association has now provided Eurogamer with the following statement:

"Threats of violence and harassment are wrong," an ESA spokesperson said. "They have to stop. There is no place in the video game community-or our society-for personal attacks and threats."

ORIGINAL STORY 16/10/14 06.20am: The Entertainment Software Association (ESA) - the top trade group in the US that's mostly known for organising and hosting E3 - has spoken out against the movement known as GamerGate.

The ESA hosts E3 every year. It's kind of a big deal.

The movement, which is linked to the organised harassment of women in the games industry, characterised itself as a backlash against corruption after a man accused his developer ex-girlfriend of sleeping with a journalist for positive coverage - an accusation which proved to be false. It gained momentum when Firefly actor Adam Baldwin coined the term GamerGate, because that's how scandals (or supposed scandals) are named these days.

GamerGate gained widespread attention this week when Feminist Frequency founder Anita Sarkeesian had to cancel a scheduled talk at Utah State University upon receiving death threats - at least one of which mentioned GamerGate. The Utah State police decided that it couldn't not allow people to bring guns to a university. You know, second amendment and all that.

But America isn't always that bonkers, and the ESA has spoken out. "Threats of violence and harassment are wrong," said an ESA spokesman in a statement to The Washington Post. "They have to stop. There is no place in the video game community - or our society - for personal attacks and threats."

For the avoidance of doubt that the ESA was referring to GamerGate, the reporter who published the quote, Haley Tsukayama, later specified on Twitter that she "asked for a statement on GamerGate, by name, for that story."

The ESA is comprised of a ton of the industry's biggest publishers, including Microsoft, Sony, Nintendo, Ubisoft, EA, Activision Blizzard, Square Enix, Capcom, Konami, Namco Bandai, Epic and more.

It's not just the ESA that has been moved to take a stance against GamerGate this week. Freelance writer Veerender Jubbal started the #StopGamerGate2014 hashtag last night on Twitter, which has been used over 89,000 times in the last 21 hours according to analytics site Topsy.