Anita Sarkeesian of Feminist Frequency with the games she purchased as part of her research back in 2014.
Anita Sarkeesian of Feminist Frequency with the games she purchased as part of her research back in 2014.
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DeanBeat: With GamerGate, enough is enough

  • Posted byby Dean Takahashi
  • Updated
  • 6 min

I’ve been silent about this #GamerGate scandal that has sent waves through the circles of game journalists, indie developers, gamers, and feminists. It was born from an ugly public fight between two lovers, game developer Zoe Quinn and her ex-boyfriend Eron Gjoni, after Gjoni posted a 9,000-word tell-all about Quinn and her alleged affairs with men, including a game journalist. It really was too much information about a lover’s quarrel.

But somehow, the story got legs. It exploded into charges of corruption in game journalism, and it brought on the online trolls, who attacked Quinn as well as other outspoken women for allegedly attacking the male-centric bias in games.

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Written by

Dean Takahashi

Dean Takahashi is editorial director for GamesBeat. He has been a tech journalist since 1988, and he has covered games as a beat since 1996. He was lead writer for GamesBeat at VentureBeat from 2008 to April 2025. Prior to that, he wrote for the San Jose Mercury News, the Red Herring, the Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times, and the Dallas Times-Herald. He is the author of two books, "Opening the Xbox" and "The Xbox 360 Uncloaked." He organizes the annual GamesBeat Next, GamesBeat Summit and GamesBeat Insider Series: Hollywood and Games conferences and is a frequent speaker at gaming and tech events. He lives in the San Francisco Bay Area.