Police are reportedly investigating a possible shooting threat at the Twitch headquarters in San Francisco. The Twitch shooting threat came to the company’s attention on Tuesday, and employees were reportedly offered the option to work from home on Wednesday.
According to Business Insider, San Francisco Police Officer Adam Lobsinger said Wednesday afternoon that there was no longer an active threat to the Twitch headquarters, though he told the publication Wednesday morning that the police did not know “how credible” the threat was and did not have a suspect at the time. Lobsinger said the Twitch shooting threat came from Twitter, but could not tell Business Insider any more details. As of Wednesday afternoon, the case had been moved to the San Francisco Police Department’s special investigations department.
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“The safety and security of our employees is our top priority,” one Twitch representative told Business Insider, “and we are focused on ensuring this is resolved quickly and safely.”
In a phone call with Kotaku, an SFPD officer said the Twitch headquarters was threatened once on Tuesday and again on Wednesday, “seemingly by the same person,” and Wednesday’s threat was followed up with a message that said, “The threat is real.”
This isn’t the first time a tech or video game-related company has been subject to a threat of violence. A shooter at the YouTube headquarters last year wounded three people and killed herself, reportedly motivated by video demonetization, and a shooting at a Madden tournament last summer killed two people. Researchers have continually found little to no proof of a connection between violence and video games, even showing that most mass shooters have no interest in violent video games, but the growing prevalence of mass shootings in general seems to have given more gravity to threats like this one. U.S. politicians have begun lobbying against video games following the recent shootings in El Paso, Texas, and Dayton, Ohio, though U.S. Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and former Nintendo of America executive Reggie Fils-Aime have both spoken against idea that there is a connection between the two.
