Enlarge / Atari co-founder Nolan Bushnell applauded the Game Developers Conference for rescinding his own award, apologizing “if my personal actions or the actions of anyone who ever worked with me offended or caused pain to anyone at our companies.” (credit: Flickr / CampusPartyMexico)

Those opposed to Bushnell’s award organized quickly around the #notnolan hashtag on Twitter, highlighting public stories of Bushnell’s questionable behavior around women during his time at Atari in the ’70s. Those stories include Bushnell’s tales of business meetings in hot tubs and of “Atari board meetings [that] seemed more like fraternity parties than business meetings” (as recalled in Steven Kent’s book The Ultimate History of Video Games); Bushnell wearing an “I love to fuck” T-shirt around the office (as related in a 2011 interview with Atari executive Ray Kassar); and Bushnell code-naming projects after “stacked” female employees (as recounted in a 2012 Playboy profile).

“Some ladies feel comfortable around me, and some don’t,” Bushnell once told The San Francisco Chronicle. “I find the aura of power and money is very intimidating to an awful number of girls.”