 These are not the dancers from the IGDA party. |
But the controversy is just beginning.
Two nights ago, the International Game
The party featured a couple of women wearing skimpy clothes dancing on stage, Carol Pinchefsky of Forbes reports.
In light of the party, Brenda Romero stepped down from her position as co-chair of the IGDA's Women in Games group. She resigned via Twitter.
"Two women walked up to me this morning with tears in their eyes and thanked me," Romero wrote in a follow-up tweet. "Now I have tears in my eyes."
Romero wasn't the only one to leave the IGDA. Web developer Darius Kazemi also resigned following the incident. Though, he only had three days left in his term as an IGDA board member.
The IGDA, a non-profit organization, has since responded to the situation, acknowledging that some of the performers' outfits were inappropriate.
"We regret that the IGDA was involved in this situation," IGDA said in a statement to Forbes. "We do not condone activities that objectify or demean women or any other group of people."
But it sounds like YetiZen, the incubator that co-presented the party with IGDA, was responsible for hiring the dancers.
"I had massive reservations using YetiZen as our sponsor the second year in a row after they burned us last year by using scantily clad women," Kazemi wrote on Twitter. "But I did not speak up about them internally because I did not want to rock the boat with like, 2 weeks left in my term, For that: I'm sorry."