[Update:] Tencent provided a statement on the matter, confirming that Nick Zasowski has been suspended while they investigate the situation, saying…
“We take accusations of this type of unprofessional behavior extremely seriously, and are currently investigating the matter. The individual has immediately been suspended pending the outcome of this investigation.”
[Original story:] Tencent’s global community manager, Nick Zasowski, is being accused of having sent unsolicited lewd photographs to women within the gaming industry, as well as sexually harassing them.
Various females within the gaming industry have come forward to corroborate claims made by other developers and gaming industry workers who have accused Tencent’s global community manager, Nick Zasowski, of sending unsolicited images of himself to the women and sexually harassing them.
It started with a former employee of Bungie, John Sylvester, who tweeted out the following on September 3rd, 2018:
Someone I thought I knew for the past 6 years has been sending unsolicited sexual photos to women. When one of them posted about it, a number of other women, friends of mine, said he’d done the same to them. I’m so fucking disappointed and angry. Fuck you, @nickzazzer. pic.twitter.com/Ng1SQ8EUOt
— John @ home (@OldManKaidan) September 3, 2018
Sylvester’s tweet was corroborated by Chance Glasco, the co-founder of Doghead Simulations, who also mentioned having friends who also noted that Zasowski also sent them unsolicited messages.
A close friend in the industry has been getting these sicko messages from @nickzazzer (Nick Zazzer) who is a community manager for an extremely major publisher. Ends up he’s been sending a lot of women these creeper messages in the mail. Don’t hire him. https://t.co/Fwm1sTdAvf
— Chance Glasco (@ChanceGlasco) September 3, 2018
One of Glasco’s coworkers, the chief marketing officer at Doghead Simulations, Amber Osborne, also corroborated the statements, noting that Zasowski had attempted to obtain sexual photos of her.
Yuuuuup. Same here. All of you are not alone. pic.twitter.com/DIFXuhDWzx
— Amber Osborne (@MissDestructo) September 3, 2018
Creator of the Twitch Kittens and a Twitch streaming partner, Julia Khaljiit, also noted that she had been on the receiving end of Zasowski’s antics as well.
He did the same to me yesterday through snapchat. Thank you so much for posting this, it’s sadly common for men in the industry to treat women this way.
— Khaljiit // Julia (@Khaljiit) September 4, 2018
When confronted with this revelation, Nick Zasowski, who previously went by the Twitter handle of Nick Zazzers, deleted his Twitter account and proceeded to scrub all of his social media feeds.
The account is now empty, save for someone else who picked up the handle after Zasowski deleted the account.
If you attempted to search up the handle, you will find that Zasowksi was embedded within the Social Justice Warrior community, and also appeared to placate the talking points and individuals who were anti-#GamerGate, based on the tweets he liked and individuals he interacted with.
@nickzazzer What’s GamerGate have to do with perceptively ethical PR and press practices? ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)
— Kevin Casper (@Norumu) January 20, 2016
The recently deleted account was actually Zasowski’s second Twitter account. His first account, @NickZas, was suspended on Twitter.
However, there’s an old archive of Zasowski’s other Twitter account, and it links up with his previous profile before it was deleted.
In the profile there’s a link to the LinkedIn profile for Zasowski, and sure enough it confirms that he’s a Tencent global community manager, after having previously completed stints as a junior community manager for Infernum Productions.
The LinkedIn profile [backup] also reveals that he was an associate community manager at Tilting Point before moving on to Tencent.
In the most recent version of the profile there’s no picture of Zasowski, but an archive of his profile from 2016 reveals the same profile information on his LinkedIn also appeared on his former Twitter accounts: that he worked at Tilting Point and Ubisoft.
Just before Zasowski scrubbed his Linkedin profile, a Twitter user managed to confirm that it’s still the same Nick Zasowski, providing a photograph of his most recent profile picture before he deleted it.
This is Tencent’s Employee, his name is Nick Zasowski aka Nick Zazzer. pic.twitter.com/rUEK0JyK6Y
— Mrs Agatha (@agathahiks) September 4, 2018
Zasowski joins a list of other male allies, feminists, and activists within the Social Justice circle who have been accused, outed, or fingered for sexual harassment after allying with anti-#GamerGate feminists, including but not limited to Devin Faraci from Birth.Movies.Death, Sam Kriss from The Guardian, Toni Rocca from Midboss, Matt Conn from Midboss, a bunch of people from Vice, and Rupert Myers from GQ Magazine.
The occurrence of anti-#GamerGate critics, male feminists, and game journalists turning out to be sexual abusers, harassers, and rapists became so prevalent that we had to add a new section on the front page for Sexual Misconduct.
We don’t know the extent of the allegations levied at Nick Zakowski, but it’s difficult to find out just how serious they are given that he’s scrubbed many of his points of contact along with his social media profiles.
I attempted to reach out to Tencent’s community manager to find out what the company’s policy is regarding social media behavior by employees, but Nick Zasowski is the community representative for the company.
(Thanks for the news tip Mombot, Lyle, Blaugast, and Ebicentre)
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