A little of column A, a little of column B. The Sarkeesian ordeal and backlash there is a good example of showing how much hatred and vitriol was out there for simply having an idea, or having a kick starter heavily exceed expectations. Sure, there's a lot of BS in her videos and either she has no idea what she's talking about - or she's being intellectually dishonest about the topics there. But the amount of hate spewed before that first video was made is a good indicator of how well feminism fits in with hardcore gamers.
But back to gamergate; it's basically one big case of "You're not technically wrong, outraged gamers. You're just assholes." Even if she did sleep with some people for favorable reviews (sorry, previews), then whoop de doo. It was for a game about depression, and it was a text-based game, and it was free. That excludes about 99.999% gamers from any interest right there. And it wasn't even for a review, it was more of an "honorable mention" in a site with a list of a bunch of other free games.
So yeah, it's not so much just "A person cheated at business, and the community around that business called out the cheater". It's that collectively, the gaming community gave way too many shits about the whole thing. Which is why it was so easy to label this as misogyny by the other side, and why they attempted to quell the whole thing. As if gaming journalism was already some holy sacred cow that was now tainted because of the ordeal (Kane and Lynch, anyone?). A great quote from the Colbert-Sarkeesian interview was something like "no... but it's about gaming journalism! This is important! Could you imagine if Hollywood journalism had no ethics?"