Being a woman on the Internet can be scary. But being a woman in the video game industry on the Internet could actually be dangerous. That's what game developer Brianna Wu found out after speaking out about sexism in the gaming world and being forced to leave her home after receiving personal death threats and threats to her business this weekend.

Wu is the co-founder and head of development at Giant Spacekat, the Boston company behind the video game Revolution 60 (pictured), which features many prominent female characters. She also hosts a podcast called Isometric, which discusses the latest news in the video game industry.

Allegations of sexism in the gaming world are nothing new, but they've been especially horrifying lately; game developer Zoe Quinn and critic Anita Sarkeesian have also been targeted with death threats, among others.

The threats against Wu revolve around Gamergate, a new movement within the gaming world. Gawker and Re/Code have full explanations of what it is and why it matters, but essentially it's a movement that on its surface is about ethics in video game journalism, but often ends up targeting women in the industry. Many Gamergate advocates claim that gaming journalists exaggerate the problematic ways in which women are portrayed in video games. This group even got Intel to pull ads from a website viewed as siding with female gamers.

But how did Gamergate lead to Wu's death threats? Here's the timeline, as collected by the blog We Hunted the Mammoth: It all started Thursday, when Wu posted photos of memes that had been created to portray Gamergaters as whiny children, featuring text like, "This is about corruption/Tweets 500 things attacking women."

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Later that night, the board 8Chan took the meme over on MemeGenerator.com, painting the opposite side as the whiny ones. Many of the memes started attacking Wu specifically:

8Chan users then released personal information about Wu, including her address, on Friday. By Friday night, the death threats started, from a user who called him or herself Death to Brianna. (The account has since been deleted.) Wu called the police, and she and her husband left their home.

"I genuinely think my life is in danger," Wu told Cosmopolitan.com on Monday afternoon. "I can barely sleep, I am barely eating. It's really affecting me." She said an investigation is ongoing, but couldn't comment on specifics. She said her company has also been under the threat of cyberattacks. "There is a literal playbook — start attacking the woman, discredit the woman, hack the woman," she said.

But she's not backing down. She said the reason she is speaking out about the threats is for the young girls who email her, telling her they're afraid to go into the gaming industry. Instead of cowering, she said she wants to work with Zoe Quinn, who is her friend, to get their local senator, Elizabeth Warren, to discuss legislation to make it easier for police to track down online threats. "I am not getting bullied out of this industry," she said. "I love my job, and I am damned good at it."

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