It started with the whole Dorito pope thing and American capitalism really starting to choke creativity out of games and the few bits of honesty from gaming journalism. People who weren't active /v/irgins don't even know about that part. As expected, the Wikipedia article doesn't mention that either. Then American feminism. Then the weird relationship thing. Then Russian trolls on both sides fanning the flames. People would post screenshots of horrible and hateful posts on 4chan (what good luck they often happened to see them within minutes of them being posted...). Then the American white supermacists came to pick up and nurture all the young boys who were being demonized. Then American left being surprised that Trump gets elected so they hate on white men a bit more to fix that. Russian propaganda fans the flames a bit more.
It's funny how back then 13 year old SJW were screaming about there not being women, black people, trans people or gays in games. People on GG would make massive lists of games since the 80's that featured minorities - positively. Now you have 13 year old boys screaming that back when games were good, there were no women, black people, trans people or gays in them. The grown up SJWs could just give them the same lists.
One of the more prominent voices of anti-GG people is currently one of the most blocked people on Bluesky because she is seen as a turncoat. The feminist talker seems to have fallen from grace too after delivering underwhelming Kickstarter promises, despite banking quite a bit on the GG kerfuffle.
It was weird to be there and see it all happen first hand and then watch how the public narrative twisted and turned to support various political agendas. A great example of a piece of online history that will never ever be told with any degree of accuracy because so many people have a vested interest in telling their version of the story. So you can pretty much disregard everything I wrote. But it is a great cautionary tale about how easy it is to make people hate whole groups of other people.
For me GG was a great example of why anonymous online environment is not for political discussion, and I generally speaking avoid it. Especially for controversial topics.