Who cares, right? Developers are still going to make games, after all. Gamers can still boot up their PCs (or consoles, you consolefags) and play some misogoviolent games. Right. At least, for now.

You see, the gaming media’s hand was forced into failing their audience. They didn’t want to lash out at gamers so forcefully. But #GamerGate happened, and they got caught with their pants down. And, like every good little sensationalist, they reacted in an extremely sensational way. And it worked — they were praised (with money, mind you) by those that agreed with them and were criticized by those that didn’t. And, each time they were criticized, they could use that as fuel for their next “Gamers suck” article… which meant more prai$e.

But the media is dumb, and they didn’t realize that their little stunt would lead to them offering so much credibility to the likes of Anita and Zoe that they’d go in front of the world and champion a report calling video games “satanic rituals”. A report that advocates for unilateral censorship of the internet, speech codes, and government issued “internet licenses”.

They were too near sighted to see that they were enabling a path to censorship. They were too busy playing their “Not me! I can’t be sexist if I agree with my critic!!” and “Let’s invoke this name to piss people off” games to see how those articles slandering gamers would be used, in front of the world, to try and dismantle the very industry they rely on for their livelihood.

But it’s happening, and the media is left with two choices — 1) They could admit they were wrong, take their lumps, and help us rebuild what they destroyed, or 2) Support global censorship through either their praise, or their silence.

Few will take option #1, as they themselves created an environment where invoking the #GamerGate name without slander is social suicide — it means ostracization from their social circles which, for most of them, is the sole reason they have a job in this industry to begin with.

Some, like Phil Owen and Polygon, will double down with their rhetoric, ever trying to justify their actions to themselves through the most public ways possible.

Most, unfortunately, will sit idly by as the world ushers in a new attack on not just video games, but free speech in general. Sadly, it’s the world they helped to create as this new era of censorship is going to be done in the name of equality and inclusiveness — the same rhetoric they were once spouting. Spouting, mind you, in articles used by the UN’s report on “cyber violence”.

And, like every era previous, gamers are once again being attacked as violent, sexist, pigs. This time, though, it’s the media’s own words being used against it and their own darlings spearheading the campaign.

And that’s a failure to gamers around the world.