if half the people back then who cared about ‘ethics in games journalism’ saw that basically the movement turned into hardcore anti feminism and then literally just fascism, I’d hope some of them would back down

It was basically just a movement to create a more libertine reactionary space on the far right, directly appealing to the worst impulses of chauvinist libertines who were previously politically disengaged or hostile towards the right over its relationship with theocracy. Maybe some of them needed the intermediary steps to really build a firmly reactionary world-view starting from the premise that women and minorities want to take their shiny fun-time treats and tell them "please sir stop screaming slurs, this is a mcdonalds and I'll have to call the police if you don't calm down," but what most of them fundamentally wanted was a sense of power and belonging and for no one to be allowed to tell them "no," just the age-old reactionary idea that someone isn't really free unless they can own, use, and trample upon others without consequences or resistance (a notion pushed by slavers, the original Fascists, and countless libertarian libertines who openly argue for children and women to be considered chattel property of men).

I think most people who wouldn't have gotten sucked in if they knew where it was going and actually got suckered in by the polite propaganda probably dropped it once it fully crystalized into a fascist movement.