Blizzard is launching a "global diversity and inclusion initiative" aimed at raising the percentage of women and underrepresented minority groups in its workforce and improving the work environment for those groups, according to an internal company email recently received by Kotaku.

Geek Actually is a weekly book series about women; specifically, female geeks. It follows five gals who bond online over their love of nerd culture... when they aren't dealing with stressful jobs, sexist arseholes and Tinder hookups. It's refreshing because it's saucy yet relatable. No surprise, considering it's written by four women who've all lived it.

Hello! I've come here today to explain something that apparently still needs explaining: Women play video games.

Last week, footage of two women fighting in Overwatch went viral. "You’re one of the worst Mercys I’ve ever played with," one told her team’s Mercy player. "Me? You’re the Mercy who’s rezzing one person and feel like they’re really good," the second player, Bailee, shot back.

Last weekend's Kiev Major crowned OG as a four-time Majors winner and celebrated the CIS region's Dota 2 history. After the closing ceremony, however, the last thing viewers saw was an unexplained montage of women simply watching the matches, a segment fans believe is detrimental to inclusiveness in Dota.

GTA Online is mostly known for violence and open world shenanigans, so most people don't realise just how much the fandom cares about clothes. For over a year now, some of the most hardcore players have been using online forums to gripe about the fashion options available for women characters in GTA Online.

According to Overwatch lore, D.va is a pro gamer who serves and inspires her country. In real life, D.va's role is starting to mirror her in-game persona, as she becomes a symbol of hope for women in South Korea.

I've often told people that about half of gamers are women, citing an Entertainment Software Association report that puts the number at 41 per cent. The invariable response: "But what games are they playing?"

All is not well in RimWorld, the popular space colonist simulator released in July. Yesterday, a Rock, Paper, Shotgun writer opened up RimWorld's code and published some surprising revelations about how sexuality factors into its gameplay. RimWorld's developer, in response, has gone on a tear, denying that the game mirrors the "sexist expectations of romance" described in the recent article.

Kristin Carnage was making her way through a city in World of Warcraft when a stranger stopped her female avatar. The stranger, a male avatar, opened a trade window with Carnage and moved, in her words, "a ton of gold" in his section of the trade box. For a while afterwards, he offered to help run her through content and sent her toys through World of Warcraft's in-game mail service.

The Korean dating simulator Mystic Messenger has become somewhat of a sensation among over a million women worldwide. It's an "otome" game (literally, "maiden game") that offers female players a harem of anime boys to court. These suitors are all charming in their own ways and all have their particular emotional needs. And, goddamn, are they needy.

The Super Smash Bros. community is having a conversation about sexual assault, whether they want to or not. Last week, that discussion came to a head when a female competitive Smash player published a guide attempting to educate the community around the famous Nintendo fighting game about consent. Now, the Smash community is debating whether sexual misconduct, recently an issue at Smash events, is tangential to the game that brought them together.

Toeing the line between camaraderie and fierce competition is near-impossible, especially in fighting games communities, but the Super Smash Sisters have mastered it, with bite.

Gary Gygax, biological determinist and creator of Dungeons & Dragons, once told a reporter for Icon magazine that "gaming in general is a male thing... Everybody who's tried to design a game to interest a large female audience has failed. And I think that has to do with the different thinking processes of men and women."

"I am officially retiring as a boobie streamer, or a titty streamer, if you will," said Raihnbowkidz, a woman who broadcasts League of Legends on Twitch.

The gender split in gaming as an overall industry has been very close to 50/50 over the last few years in Australia. We know that thanks to the regular Digital Australia studies conducted by Bond University. But like the rest of the world, that's not the case in esports. It's male dominated and is likely to stay that way for the foreseeable future.

So people ask themselves: how do you get more women into the world of esports? And how do you encourage more women gamers to remain in the competitive scene? One major esports organisation tried to explore that conundrum recently — in the worst way possible.

For the past few days, popular Twitch broadcasters and their audiences have been embroiled in a heated debate. The topic? Women streamers and whether they should — or shouldn't — be showing skin on stream.

News that Ubisoft scuttled plans for including female playable characters in the upcoming Assassin's Creed Unity was met by scorn and derision by many video game commentators last night. Now, Kotaku has an official statement from Ubisoft on the controversy.

The next big Assassin's Creed game and the first to appear exclusively on next-generation consoles won't let people play as female assassins in a new cooperative multiplayer mode, Ubisoft said this week at E3. Speaking in an interview with Polygon, Unity creative director Alex Amancio said that while they originally planned to include female assassins, the "reality of production" made adding the additional characters too costly.