Nintendo states that it terminated Alison Rapp because of her second job conflicting with Nintendo corporate policy, not her public conflicts with fans.
Alison Rapp has been the target of angry gamers over the past few months. Rapp works at the Nintendo’s Treehouse localization team and has been blamed for the toning down of the sexuality of Nintendo games – like Xenoblade Chronicles X – before being released in the west. She was labeled a “feminazi,” a “SJW,” and other, less savory things. In an effort to further discredit Rapp, her critics dug up an essay she wrote in college titled, Speech We Hate: An Argument for the Cessation of International Pressure on Japan to Strengthen Its Anti-Child Pornography Laws. Critics used this essay to accuse Rapp of arguing to legalize child pornography. However, it should noted that it is highly debatable if the essay explicitly says what Rapp’s critics accuse of it. Even though Rapp works in the marketing department and has little involvement in the translation or removal of sexual content, she has been built up as a target for harassment.
Alison Rapp’s supporters and critics can plainly see that the past few months haven’t been kind to her. Furthermore, it’s been revealed that she has been terminated from her position at Nintendo. If you’ve been following the drama, it seems very easy to connect the dots and assume that all the online harassment and her college essay lead to her termination; Rapp even hinted as much in a tweet. According to Nintendo, this is not so. In a statement released to GameBeats, Nintendo claims that Rapp was working another job which conflicted with her duties at Nintendo; the company hasn’t provided any detail on what this other job was, but Rapp herself has tweeted a response to the accusation of moonlighting, stating she started to moonlight under fake name to help pay off her student loans. Her twitter account has more tweets concerning this controversy, and are worth reading to get her side of the story. Below is Nintendo’s actual statement:
[blockquote cite=”http://venturebeat.com/2016/03/30/nintendo-denies-firing-alison-rapp-due-to-pressure-from-a-hate-group/”]“Alison Rapp was terminated due to violation of an internal company policy involving holding a second job in conflict with Nintendo’s corporate culture. Though Ms. Rapp’s termination follows her being the subject of criticism from certain groups via social media several weeks ago, the two are absolutely not related. Nintendo is a company committed to fostering inclusion and diversity in both our company and the broader video game industry and we firmly reject the harassment of individuals based on gender, race, or personal beliefs. We wish Ms. Rapp well in her future endeavors.”[/blockquote]
