TV News Station May Have Erroneously Linked Shooter to #GamerGate

By now, you might have heard about Bryce Williams, the shooter in Virginia who murdered a reporter and her photographer live on TV.  As the reasons for his actions remain in the realm of speculation, news agencies and TV stations have begun their own investigations into his life. 

An anonymous man contacted the WSB-TV news station in Atlanta claiming to know the shooter says he played the first-person shooter Counter-Strike with him for over three years in a group identified as GamerGate. They ran with the story (archived link) based entirely on these claims. Their news report was also broadcast on TV. 

Those in the gaming industry might be familiar with the term, which began as a hashtag on Twitter exactly one year ago.

The anonymous gamer says the shooter went by the gaming profile Billi8473—a level 1 profile with 132 hours of Counter-Strike on its playlist. 

The gamer claims that the video the shooter posted online had strong similarities with the games he claims to have played with the shooter. 

Finally, the news article ends with a satirical quote by Twitter user @MargaretsBelly, which claims that the shooter is a supporter of the #GamerGate hashtag. She says that the journalists from WSB-TV never attempted to contact her to verify her baseless claim connecting the shooter with the hashtag.

Nothing in the shooter's public Facebook or Twitter profiles ever indicated that he was a gamer, hardcore or otherwise. Needless to say, WSB-TV appears to have ran the story without really doing much in the way of fact-checking, and people are having a field day at their expense by renaming their Steam accounts to Billi8473.

It's entirely possible that Bryce Williams played Counter-Strike with the anonymous gamer, but it's highly unlikely.