Gamergate

Despite eventually being 'cancelled', Yiannopoulos's career was plagued with controversy from the beginning, from allegations that staff were not being paid fairly at The Kernel, to the writer's association with the misogynistic 'Gamergate' movement.

Further, Avalanche has faced its own problems, including a GamerGate-supporting designer leaving the company and accusations of antisemitism written into 's Goblin Rebellion storyline.

It is a vestige of Gamergate, an online harassment campaign that started in 2014 and targeted women across the industry.

It would later claim that it was unaware of Gamergate when it made its decision, but that it would stand by the decision and not advertise on Gamasutra.

The precursors to Gamergate were disinformation campaigns targeting women of color.

They're told never to use the actual term "Gamergate," as that will allow the message to be filtered.

A Riot employee leaked screenshots of an internal chatroom where employees discuss diversity issues to a section of Reddit created by supporters of Gamergate, a movement known for harassing advocates for diversity in games and game companies.

Gamergate and the backlash to the reboot of predate our current political landscape, but the geek community’s harassment of women, particularly online, is still an issue.

Gamergate is why the toxicity of nerd culture is a more-than-reasonable peg for a review of a book like It’s why, at the time, people were thinking a lot about the toxicity of nerd culture in general.