Slowly but surely the academic evidence is building up. A new study conducted by researchers at Ohio University has found that women playing multiplayer on Halo 3 receive three times as much abuse as men. Confirming what is already common knowledge to those who have to put up with it, authors Jeff Kuznekoff and Lindsey Rose drew the data from interactions compiled over the course of 245 matches on the game’s most popular playlist.

The study involved the use of three similarly-named gamertags, one each assigned to a male and a female voice and one to remain voiceless. Fairly neutral pre-recorded messages were played before, during and after each game, the same phrases being used by both the male and female accounts. Kuzenkoff and Rose claim to different aptitudes at the game, broadening their interactions to include high- and low-ranking players as per the matchmaking system. Comments directed towards the researchers were afterwards placed into three categories: directed negative, directed positive and queries. Overall, they encountered 1660 unique gamers, so rest assured the results are not skewed by many recurring bad apples.

After over 80 matches each, they found the female-voiced account was subjected to far more abuse than its male counterpart, despite equal measures of skill and congeniality. Little serves to pin the shitty behaviour received to the fault of the victim. On the other hand, it was discovered that positive comments tended to correlate with a high skill level of the female-identified player. It’s also worth noting that the voiceless account received less harassment than both the male and female accounts.