Hafu shares disturbing story about competing in esports as a woman
Instagram/itshafuTwitch streamer Rumay ‘Hafu’ Wang shared an extremely disturbing incident that happened during an esports competition she competed in as a teenager, shocking viewers.
During a September 25 broadcast, Hafu discussed how her success in many different video games is changing people’s perception of her.
“It’s harder for people to attack me cause I’ve gotten better at a lot of games,” she explained. “I mean, Among Us is not an example, because you cannot objectively say someone is good at Among Us in my opinion.”
While the streamer’s skills at the hit title are dismissed, even by her own standards, there are still other games that she’s been having success with.
“I won PogChamps 2,” she said, referencing the streamer chess tournament. “It’s little things like that that keep adding up… it makes me really happy that people are sticking up for me.”
However, it wasn’t always like this, especially for female gamers. Slightly later on in the broadcast, the streamer delved into an unfortunate incident that happened as a teenager.
“I always use this as the main example, but when I was 17, I was a pro WoW (World of WarCraft) player,” she began. “On the official Blizzard tournament realm, there was a team that qualified named ‘Gonna R*pe Hafu at Regionals.’”
Right away Hafu’s chat reacted with plenty of “wtfs,” clearly in shock that Blizzard would ever allow a team to use that name.
“And that flew! They qualified!” she exclaimed. “That was the eternal attitude of gaming at the time. So like, the whole community kinda had that attitude and it has changed so much in the last decade.”
A lot of companies, including Blizzard, have since taken more steps to prevent harassment in-game such as the use of new profanity filters and reporting options. Plus, from Wang’s own experience, the whole culture has shifted drastically.
“I’m so hopeful for the future,” she chimed. “Because I didn’t think it was ever going to change.”