Individuals involved in the “social justice Twitter” scene and the anti-Gamergate counter movement have been implicated in an effort to dox vocal Gamergate supporter mombot, a Japanese woman who has been critical of their activities.
Information was acquired and subsequently used to threaten mombot into leaving the social media platform—but it all turned out to be a ruse by the Gamergate supporter and an associate embedded within the ranks of those claiming to fight harassment. Heat Street documented most of what happened.
New information has come to light about the small group of individuals who participated in the event, which has since become known as #ZachAttack (in reference to the fake identity of a non-existent person named “Zach Miller”). Among those involved is high-profile game developer Palle Hoffstein, Creative Director at Ubisoft Blue Byte, who launched Heroes of Might & Magic Online in 2014.
The doxing group was created after mombot published a Medium exposé on how Zoe Quinn’s anti-harassment and abuse hotline Crash Override Network agent Robert Marmolejo (alias @UnseenPerfidy) allegedly sexually harassed 20 different women behind the scenes despite his performative nature on social media.
Posting under the name “27 Inch Garlic Hero,” Hoffstein can be seen admitting in leaked chatlogs that he was uncovering private information about mombot.
“Sorry I’ve been playing detective,” he wrote. “Seems to be a German living in Japan.”
Following a trail of breadcrumbs left by mombot and her associate within the group, Hoffstein was lead to believe that she was Zach.
“Nope. Known mombot was a dude for a long time. And the First Tweet tool (and some digging) showed me that the account used to use the name Zach,” wrote Hoffstein, who contributed to the investigation by discovering and sharing private photographs of a German named Tristan Junker, whom the group determined to be an alias of mombot. In reality, Tristan was the person whose stock photos were used to carry out the Zach Miller guise.
He wrote: “So we have a very minor German celebrity in Japan who pretends to be a Japanese housewife to save gaming and also pretends to be a Californian named Zach? WTF?”
Later in the chat logs, Hoffstein says he looked into acquiring the @dadbot Twitter handle, which the group would have intended to use to harass mombot with snippets of the dox.
“I wish Twitter would free up dormant account,” he wrote.
As for Hoffstein’s motive for his involvement in the doxing group, he believes mombot is “trying to get folks in my industry fired doesn’t exactly make folks feel safe either,” to which another member replies “I have said forever a dox isnt [sic] necessarily a bad thing.”
Regarding appearances of impropriety, ethical violations and objections from others within the social justice Twitter scene, Hoffstein wrote: “Why does anyone even think of ‘SJ Twitter’ any more? [sic] It’s just a series of overlapping and constantly changing social circles, some with delusions of importance.”
With no internal objections to using dox to harass and blackmail mombot, individuals in the group went ahead with attacking their political opponent with the information they believed was real. They came away with egg on their faces.
The involvement of a prominent video game developer and employee of a major games publisher in the efforts to dox and blackmail a woman into blacking out her social media presence raises serious moral and ethical questions. How far are individuals purporting to fight for “social justice” in the gaming industry is willing to go?
Palle Hoffstein has been unreachable for comment and blocked users inquiring into his involvement with the group, its investigation and subsequent dissemination of the dox. In what may be an attempt to evade responsibility for his actions, the game developer switched aliases multiple times from @Palle_Hoffstein to variations of @Garlic_Hero and @GarlicHero until finally deleting his account.
Before going incognito, Hoffstein wrote: “I know when I’ve been owned. Good game, folks.”