A dev decides that you can get a Steam key for a game you bought based on what you support or not

I doubt it's done by the hashtag. Not sure what rules it uses, but the list exists, and it's the only way I can think of him automating it.

But Gamers are dead. If they weren't, we wouldn't see $5 hats in TF2 and other shitty DLCs that sell in millions...

Anita Sarkeesian's face is everywhere, screaming that we gamers are the trash of society.

This is a lie. She is not saying that, and has never said that. I've watched her videos, and, for the most part, she's focused on the overuse of a few specific tropes in games. To the extent that they target anyone, her videos target lazy developers, not players.

But you're lying about her, either way; and spreading lies about people in order to damage their reputations is harassment, so yes, by repeating that lie, you are a small part of Gamergate's ongoing campaign of harassment against Sarkeesian and people like her.

I expect that these lie will continue to circulate via badly-thrown-together jpegs, growing more distorted and exaggerated with every repetition. Again, the goal is not to spread information; the goal is to harass someone who has attracted Gamergate's ire by blackening their reputation through whatever distortions and exaggerations they can get past the radar.

Likewise, your comment about the gamers-are-dead articles is a lie. They did not come out on the same day. One came out first, then the others replied to it. Most of them were discussing the evolving nature of "gamers" as an identity, and (while I didn't like the language all of them used) they were not, generally, dismissive of actual flesh-and-blood gamers so much as they were dismissive of a particular ''stereotype'' of gamers which I think we can all agree is better put to rest -- they were saying that gamers are, on the whole, more diverse and more complicated than the image usually associated with the term brings to mind.

The so-called secret mailing list was likewise not an ethical breach (and was no more 'secret' than any other mailing list); numerous industry commentators have explained, many times, that such mailing lists are commonplace among journalists across all industries. In this case I tend to think that the lies are intended to be manipulative rather than just a form of harassment (in that lying about these things lets you push a particular narrative), but the effect is the same.

The ''core'' of Gamergate, as you can see based on the targets it chooses, is opposition to feminism; it is based around an conspiracy theory in which feminists and Social Justice Witches are secretly trying to use gaming to advance their sinister agenda, or something along those lines. I'm sure that if you buy into that conspiracy theory (and accept the lies I noted you were repeating above), it looks like you are heroically fighting for ethics against a world where all your ideological enemies just so happen to have formed a vast common cause and engaged in sinister practices in order to manipulate you.

But from an outside perspective, it looks like you aren't driven by ethical concerns at all, so much as emotional annoyance at people like feminists and Social Justice Witches who keep saying things that piss you off. That's a fair thing to feel, but you need to recognize that your willingness to accept so many dubious things stems from your heavy emotional reaction to what people like Sarkeesian are saying -- not any real sense of ethics. This is why, when outside observers look into the mess of lies and nothings that Gamergate considers the crux of its ethical crusade, they inevitably come back shrugging. Absent your intense emotional desire to jab feminists and social justice witches in the eyes, there's simply nothing there.

Don't get me wrong, his decision was totally a bad move. I'm just saying that with the way the 'gender wars' thing goes, both sides will be busy spinning this to their own narrative as hard as they can, and any coverage will likely be heavily against GG. I was saying that it's something of an "I can do no evil" mentality that people get when it comes to these subjects. A big enough hugbox can make you feel immune to criticism, and yet businesses and retailers (despite often nodding along and agreeing with whatever is the popular opinion of the moment) will be taking notes on his behavior, recognising him as a huge liability that they will think twice about ever dealing with. Phil Fish for example, will probably find it hard to land a place anywhere but as part of a larger coding squad rather than as anybody of authority in a project, y'know?

For example, the entire Paranautical Activity thing was pretty crazy. In one hand, the tantrum alone was highly unprofessional and enough to make most retailers frown and consider punitive action, in the other, what he did clearly wasn't a death threat. For a death threat there has to be a clear, direct and serious threat towards someone's life. If someone is having a capslock tantrum and says "I WILL MURDERISE THAT MAN" during halloween, while it implies a form of death threat, it is blatantly not an actual death threat. I don't think Valve was necessarily wrong in taking down the game (initially), but to call those tweets a genuine death-threat is absurd. You can set a standard and act on premise without hiding behind a dressed-up accusation. Even had the game not been pulled or the dev not punished, people in general were suddenly made aware of his immaturity and unreliability. That sort of thing sticks for a long time. It'll have the same effect with this guy and his "no keys for this group I disagree with!" moment. Sure the degrees and forms of immaturity and unprofessionalism are worlds apart in my examples, but people take note all the same.

It just really seems like he has sunk way too far into the SJW part of anti-GG stuff, and is unable to separate himself from it. It's easy to get into a sort of TV-Tropes style directional funk, where you start with one small equality issue then find yourself totally swallowed by a mass of biased media, and then end up outraged at "the enemy" and unable to disengage. I assume this goes the same for the pro-GG people who get into similar combative social media frenzies too. A case of wanting so badly to fight a form of inequality directly in front of you, that you kinda forget to check for the inequality everywhere else around you. Once a person feels they have a good cause to fight for, it can be hard to dissuade them so long as they have a demon to hunt (and every group has it's extremists, social media just makes it easier to come under the impression they're the majority).

Aaagh, crap, sorry. I'm going way off subject here. Damn, am I being a hypocrite here? The entire equality issues subject really gets me fired up, so it's probably hypocritical to call that guy out on it, but my version of "fired up" is often an extended form of frustration that nobody is having an honest dialog and everybody is resorting to character assassination and trolling.