Female Player Virtually Groped in VR Game, Accuses Him of Sexual Assault

Image of representative game,The Guardian

Online users can be downright abusive in chat and social media but what happens when you add another layer of realism, things could become weirder. Such is the case for a US-based female virtual reality gamer who felt violated when another gamer virtually groped her. Her name is Jordan Belamire (name changed), and she complained that she was sexually assaulted by another gamer while she was immerse d in a virtual reality game in Redwood City, California.

On a blog post on Medium, she expressed how she was accused. "Last week I was groped in virtual reality — did you know that could happen? I didn't, but now I'm all the wiser."

Ms. Belamire experienced the incident while she was playing a game called QuiVr on her brother-in-law's HTC Vive VR.

In QuiVr, players traverse to a virtual world infested with zombies, and they're given a task to shoot them down with bows and arrows.

While playing the multiplayer of QuiVr, another player named BigBro442 encountered her in the virtual world. Players can chat with each other using the headset in multiplayer mode, so even if the players are using a universal avatar of a disembodied helmet in the game, BigBro442 was able to learn about Ms. Belamire's gender because of her voice.

"Suddenly, BigBro442's disembodied helmet faced me dead-on," she described. "His floating hand approached my body, and he started to virtually rub my chest."

Feeling uncomfortable, Ms. Belamire immediately told BigBro442 to stop but he didn't stop. She tried to escape him by running but due to her lack of experience with controlling the game, BigBro442 was able to chase her down. Ms. Belamire said that the experience felt like it was actually happening in the real world.

"Of course, you're not physically being touched, just like you're not actually one hundred feet off the ground, but it's still scary as hell,'" she wrote.

Speaking with CNNMoney, she said, "I've been groped in real life, once in a Starbucks in broad daylight. I know what it's like to happen in person."

"The shock and disgust I felt [in QuiVr] was not too far off from that," she added.

She admitted that some people might find it ridiculous that she felt sexually assaulted while playing a virtual reality game, but she warned people not to judge her without going through what she did.

"This sounds ludicrous to anyone who hasn't stood on that virtual reality ledge and looked down, but if you have, you might start to understand," she wrote.

"The public virtual chasing and groping happened a full week ago and I'm still thinking about it."

Have you experienced something as creepy in a virtual reality game? Would you consider her a sexual assault victim? Feel free to share your thoughts in the comments section below.