Issues at ESA over the years

Sexual harassment and other issues at ESA throughout the years.

Content warning: explicit sexual harassment, stalking

Preamble 1: I don't want to piggyback off Lovare's incredible courage that made her come forward with accounts of incidents she experienced at ESA (can be read here: https://pastebin.com/sSEJm6vk please take your time and read through this as well) - I simply want to add to it and affirm that these are not isolated incidents that can be kept quiet. Names are left out so no one will face harassment off of this. Lovare, if you are reading this: thank you so much for your bravery that has also shown me the incidents I know of are not isolated either or contained to the years prior to a security personnel at ESA. I hope you - or anyone really - will never have to experience similar things again at other events.

Preamble 2: I am posting this from a temporary mail address and discord account through a VPN in fear of retaliation and potentional harassment or bans from the event, if I even still plan on going, which I was very much on the fence about. Including my writing style that is altered for this. In any case, I'm sorry that I'm this cowardly, it is simly to protect myself. Also English is not my mother tongue so there might be slight mistakes or mistranslations. Sorry.

Preamble 3: Some of these events happened as far back as 2016, so while I won't likely be able to replicate the exact wording used, but the spirit of them.


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-- Sexual harassment at ESA --

Some of the earliest events of sexual harassment I witnessed and can recall happened in 2016. Bear in mind, during this time there was no actual security staff and the event was still on the smaller and less professional side of things, with maybe 20 or so women even attending.
In 2016, ESA had the great setup of couches behind the streamers and a screen for the chat to read for the audience in the middle. When women sat in the audience, twitch chat - as many female streamers surely have experience with - does, what twitch chat does and talks about the typical "would" and "I wonder how she moans" when a woman is visible in the audience. This gets a dark spin on it though when you start recognizing some of these chatter names as attendees. As there was no one to report to but the chat moderation team, I did report some of these very harassing messages (with the added information that these people are actually attending) to them and was shrugged off. This didn't specifically made me feel safe, especially since back then the venue was a good 10 or 30 minute walk (depending on the hotel) from the hotel.
Another incident I can vividly recall was another female member of the community I'm part of being texted by an attendee, who at the time presumably was drunk, explicit dms on skype/discord to the sense of "you are pretty, but you'd be even prettier on my ****.". Once again, there was no one to address this behaviour to really and this has led to said female member avoiding said attendee for the remaining time she attended ESA, which she no longer does. Yes, the male attendee was drunk but this does not excuse his behaviour or texting and he was openly creeping on her on other occassions, telling her he'd walk her back to the hotel only for her to refuse him multiple times and him getting pissed about it.

There were some more "minor" incidents and comments that are quite typical of let's say "13 year old watches twitch" behaviour, which never got reported but talked about between female attendees.

I thought this would see some improvement when ESA moved to Malmo and started getting more professional with a security staff and other staff, but it sure didn't.
I have kept witnessing more or less minor events happening with male attendees pretty much sexualizing some female attendees amongst their peers saying how they have r**e fantasies about them and trying to come up with plans to grope them and "make it look accidental".
Many fellow female attendees I know of either reported some of these more minor incidents only to be laughed off as "well that's just twitch" or simply gave up on coming forward for multiple reasons:
- The typical lack of response from ESA side of things as experienced in the past
- The lack of female staff that they felt comfortable to even confide in
- The wish to not cause a scene at the event

With the removal of the security team in 2024 I can't see this improving at all, nor do I know of any senior staff memmbers other than maybe one that is female.


-- The poor treatment of (ex)volunteers --

I am / was at the time closer friends with some of the volunteers and a lot of them, after either hanging up the nail themselves or having been booted, don't have many nice words to say about how they got treated prior/during/after their departure from volunteering at the event.
One volunteer I know of stepped back for several reasons such as wanting to pursue other things, but also due to the extreme stress and lack of support they encountered during their time as volunteer. After stepping down, they attended other speedrunning events purely as a speedrunner and were heavily shadowed / stalked by other ESA staff that kept joining and leaving their discord, monitoring their streams and chats to see if they would talk badly about ESA whenever some public uproar (such as the Punchy incident) happened. They were basically being shunned for stepping down and then going to a different marathon and are convinced that they have been silently banned from attending ESA.
Other volunteers have reported that they basically got told from one day to another that they no longer are needed and are being made redudant / replaced by others or even AI for no particular reasons given to them.

-- The botched response to the corona pandemic --
Okay, this one might also be blamed on just the general Swedish mentality at the time, but I still want to bring this up and compare it to other marathons such as GDQ and RPGLB. GDQ still had mask mandates and - as far as I know - RPGLB even did still have them this year, leading to fewer attendees getting sick.
When ESA came back in 2022 after the pandemic, I had concerns about the safety regarding corona, especially considering how many people got "ESAids" (the GDFlu) every year even prior to the pandemic. No masks or testing were required on the event floor. There was a lack of disinfectant for runners to disinfect headsets, keyboards and mice with. People that showed clear symptoms were not even told to wear masks as long as their test was negative (for which no prove was required either). This has lead to many people actually contracting corona at the event - me included and having been hospitalized for it upon my return home. I voiced concerns about this very early into the event to security and the organization, which were simply shrugged off because, again, Swedish thinking at the time was corona = flu.
This got even worse in 2023 were there was no disinfectant whatsoever on the event floor, while at least in 2022 there were a few disinfectants being around the coffee machines and such. Fewer people probably getting it but this might also be due to the general population not testing themselves as much anymore, etc.

-- The issue of no security team --
I can't believe that there isn't a security team at an event with 600 - 900 expected attendees. I'm quite frankly shocked, because I didn't know until recently that the security team got thanos'ed out of existence.
This is not only a sexual harassment issue, but a general security issue. Things such as theft of consoles/controllers/other hardware, physical violence (drunk people come to mind), medical emergencies that might need a translator for help, etc. will not have someone to address these concerns to or someone to look into them. I can't see how organization alone will handle the mammoth task of scheduling (as this also got thanos'ed as far as I'm aware), running the event and security for it.
I remember a time when another person in the same community as me got stalked by their ex-partner, who got relatively swiftly dealt with and banned by security and made sure that they can no longer enter the event floor. This was a good response, but who will handle things like these going forward?

-- Final thoughts --
I really thought things in general were going to improve with the change of location and the more professional setting with different staff teams in 2018. Sadly, a lot of these things have been eliminated or have not brought any improvement in the situations about sexual harassment.
I personally don't know if some of these positions got eliminated due to lack of manpower (which might be because the word got out from some exvolunteers about their treatment) or due to wanting to centralise the power more within the organization, but it's not a good change.
I hope that things improve or are at least better at other marathons. I also hope these insights give others the courage or closure to know that they are not isolated incidents and it is not just them this is/was happening to. If you are still attending ESA, please stay safe and try to find some people within your community you can rely on.

Again, sorry that I will not come forward with my name, but I don't think it should matter to begin with, as this is a more systematic issue that an isolated incident reported by one mere anonymous person.