GDC Attendee Reports Being Spiked, Ignored By Police

thegamer.com:

An attendee of GDC 2024 says that her drink was spiked at a hotel bar, but authorities refused to investigate the matter. Snow Rui, president of the game publisher Hooded Horse, says that she was met with "complete indifference" from emergency services, with police reluctant to investigate and the hospital she was admitted to refusing to run tests for commonly used date rape drugs.

Rui says that she and her team at Hooded Horse did "everything possible" to keep her safe and report this to the authorities as soon as possible. However, one of her coworkers tells me that they were "treated with indifference" by authorities, noting that "crucial evidence was overlooked". In response, they call for GDC to be held in a different city in the future, as police in San Francisco are "indifferent" towards complaints of drink spiking.

In previous years, others have reported having their drinks tampered with during GDC week. Last year, a spokesperson for the event told TheGamer that it "severely condemn[s]" this behaviour, and "encourage[s] reporting to the police."

However, as Rui's account highlights, that may not be enough. The incident did not take place at GDC but at a bar in a hotel in which "many GDC attendees stay". Rui estimates that she had been drinking slowly throughout the night, and no one in the group was intoxicated before they noticed a change in Rui's behaviour.

"Suddenly after a round shortly before closing, I began deteriorating," says Rui, sharing her experiences in a LinkedIn post. "My friends said that I began to seem extremely intoxicated, and they became quite confused as to why."

Rui says this quickly escalated when her friends tried to take her back to her hotel room. "By the time they walked me to the elevator, I was no longer able to reply coherently to their questions, and by the time we reached my floor, I was no longer able to stand or walk. My husband Tim met us in the hall – by the time we reached the room, I was vomiting uncontrollably and