We start with a trigger warning.

Please be aware that this entry contains upsetting language.

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Sky Broadband is fast, reliable, and ideal for gaming.

But there’s a problem for many gamers that can’t be fixed by fast broadband.

Horrific abuse

Sky believes everyone should be free to enjoy gaming.

But the reality is anything but.

“Kill yourself. Honestly, go kill yourself.”

“Nobody would care if you died tomorrow.”

“You’re lucky I don’t know your address. Otherwise, I’d rape you.”

These are real quotes - by men, to women - when gaming.

Our research showed that 3 in 4 women under 25 experiences abuse every day while gaming online. 11% even felt suicidal, because of the abuse they received.

Shameful statistics we were determined to face head-on.

This wasn’t about sales; it was about bringing to light / driving awareness of this behaviour within the gaming community and beyond.

We created a brand new training facility in the Sky Guild Gaming Centre in London, designed as an essential part of the Guild’s Esports women’s team’s training.

We then invited unsuspecting male gamers - each of them keen to showcase their talent and make is as a ‘pro’ - to enter the room to play a specially designed first-person shooting game.

But what they thought was a training simulator to test skill and reaction speed, turned into something very different.

Halfway through, silhouetted characters appeared on the floor-to-ceiling video walls around them, hurling abuse as they played.

The test continued but we were now testing their ability to game whilst taking abuse.

Just like a Women.

Making this the most authentic training simulator ever.

As the game ended, we revealed the truth.

The training room wasn’t real.

But every word of the abuse was.

There’s #NoRoomForAbuse in gaming.

To show how normalised sexual harassment and abusive language had become, it wasn’t the woman gamers we needed to speak to. The real challenge was to turn male gamers into allies against abuse.

But how?

The breakthrough moment came when we identified a surprisingly high desire amongst male gamers to ‘go professional’. In a 2020 survey, 41% of male respondents said they wanted to become professional gamers.

What if we gave them a chance? Or at least – what if we appeared to?

And so, we started with a simple, but tantalising, question: “Do you have what it takes to be a pro gamer?”

From here we’d entice male gamers to enter a gaming simulator, designed to test if they have what it takes to be a professional gamer. And we used that moment to show them what being pro is really like for three quarters of women gamers.

Our gaming simulator was a harrowing experience for all who entered, but a necessary way to kickstart a conversation. A room built and engulfed with screens to amplify the abuse and the feeling Women gamers experience.

Over the course of 2 days over 40 individuals experienced the room for themselves and were shocked by the results.

We captured the male gamers’ real-time reactions, had mental health specialists from Self Space on hand to debrief and to explain the effect this abuse has on women’s mental health. We held a roundtable discussion for them to hear from high-profile women gamers about the changes needed within the community and industry at large.

By partnering with cyberbullying charity, CyberSmile, we created educational resources to encourage women to feel confident reporting abuse. And with Guild, we set up events and tournaments, for women gamers and their allies - including The Lobby Live.

With our paid support - and 69 million impressions overall - we reached 8.9 million of the crucial mid-and-hardcore gaming audience, with 3.8m of them watching the assets in full.

Our Twitter content smashed view-through-rate benchmarks with 26% of users clicking through to help deliver change in the gaming market.

And 84% of gamers considered the campaign ‘authentic’ with ‘awareness of the abuse women face’ and ‘understanding the traumatic effect of abuse’, seeing the greatest uplifts by 33%.

By partnering with cyberbullying charity, CyberSmile, we created educational resources to encourage women to feel confident reporting abuse.

But we have only just begun, with bigger plans to come. In year 2 the strategy will shift into driving structural change in the industry through creating new & safe opportunities for women gamers. Guild and Sky have already created a Rocket League Boost Championship which was a safe tournament for women only.