This article draws on in‐depth interviews with 47 male and female gamers to investigate the interactional processes whereby gamers reproduce gender inequality. Women gamers, because they faced harassment from men, traded place for peace, locating themselves at the margins and minimizing their presence within gaming spaces. Men, who faced no harassment on the basis of gender, normalized the seeming absence of women while justifying their dominant position within gaming culture. These processes maintained the overall marginalization of women within gaming culture by reproducing notions of women as outsiders and men as natural gamers.