Summarizing Zoë Quinn’s Case Against Alec Holowka

tl;dr: Let’s withhold judgment on the matter between Zoë Quinn and Alec Holowka until someone else comes forward directly accusing Holowka of non-verbal abuse. Until then, it’s a matter of, “he said, they said.” (Quinn uses they/them pronouns)

The allegations against Holowka

Per Quinn’s tweet on August 26, 2019, these are their specific allegations against Howolka:

• Physical confinement
• Not letting Quinn leave the apartment without him
• Not giving Quinn the code to come back into the apartment
• Isolating them socially, by excluding new roommates
• Violent sex (assumed to be non-consensual)
• Verbal abuse, such as saying how rotten Quinn was
• Violent fingering
• Subsequent black-balling from industry events

Two of these are illegal (confinement, and non-consensual sex), and one of these is worthy of industry scorn (black-balling within the industry).

Confirmation via allegation-sharing

Did the accuser share their allegations to others at or near the time of the incident? If they didn’t, then it leaves the possibility, especially if some time has passed, that they misremembered the incident or are intentionally misrepresenting it. Here are three instances supporting Quinn’s initial reports:

• Christine Love (game dev/writer) was one of three friends mentioned who were going to join in the indie house with Holowka and Quinn. She says she heard most of what Quinn mentioned at the time.
• Patricia Hernandez (Sr. Editor from Polygon) heard Quinn tell this story at the time
• Danny Baranowsky (video game music artist) said, “she told me about what happened with alec years ago, shortly afterward.”

However, tweets during the stay in question indicate a state of affairs between Howolka and Quinn that are inconsistent with a narrative of abuse. These private tweets were given to the publication The Post Millenial. Despite the seemingly goofy publication name, by all accounts, the paper appears to be a legitimate, award-winning, Canadian news organization with a regular staff and journalistic ethics.

Those tweets could have been faked. We don’t know precisely how TPM verified the tweets. However, there were a lot of screenshots of tweets. And maybe TPM screen-shared with their source, which would have require an elaborate set-up to fake.

And just because Quinn occasionally reported a sunny disposition, that doesn’t necessarily mean there couldn’t be abuse happening beneath the surface.

So, are the tweets enough to put a cloud over Quinn having shared her allegations? Generally, we need to give accusers the benefit of the doubt. However, since the evidence presented is specific to the allegations in question, and not a broad attack on Quinn’s credibility, Quinn’s disposition during the time period is fair game.

Confirmation from other accusers

According to Quinn, their accusations are confirmed by the following:

• family
• friends who were there
• Holowka’s coworkers
• Holowka’s roommates
• multiple other survivors
• Quinn’s roommate

However, in digging around the Internet for what these other accusations were, I couldn’t find a direct one describing abuse of a physical or sexual nature. It sure sounds like Howolka was a nightmare to be around, but only so. Here is a sampling of what I gathered was meant to be damning evidence. Scott Benson, co-creator with Howolka on Night in the Woods. From the Kickstarter update:

Others have talked about how Alec’s conduct towards women was something whispered around at game events. A woman I’ve known for a while got in touch with us this week talking about how she’s been told many times not to be alone in a room with him. Men have gotten in touch about working with Alec and the things that happened to them there. There are other things, things from people we trust, things you’ll probably never hear about. But honestly just being a really shitty boss, as detailed by Albertine, is probably enough for us to separate from him alone. To say nothing of the far more serious allegations out there. Multiple people are afraid to run into the guy at different conferences.

…

The things that Alec did during the bad times were worse than we knew, and he’s still being abusive in other ways to those around him.

Besides Benson, was there anybody else? Benson posted a thread referencing other accusers. Half of the references are missing now, but here are three that I could retrieve:

• Aura Moon (game developer) heard from “four different women” similar accusations
• Albertine Watson (former collaborator with Holowka) said, “insults and hurtful moments by Holowka has eroded my confidence as a new game developer.”
• Becca Hallstedt (freelance artist), in a since-deleted tweet, is paraphrased as saying, “how she personally knew multiple people who had bad experiences with Alec iirc.”