Nah, Kotaku had a shit reputation for years before gamergate got shat into existence. Their reporting was sloppy and often wrong, most of them sucked at the games they were reviewing, they spammed out vapid clickbait articles about nothing to farm ad rev. The only reason people respect them now is because they were positioned opposite gamergate, as if two things can’t both suck.
You’re joking, right? Pre-2012, it was one of the most visited sites on the internet and in the top 20 gaming sites. They weren’t some no-name blog. Then after they hired Totilo, their shitty pop-tabloid reporting became so infamous even Forbes had articles about it, well before gamergate was ever a thing. This all used to be sourced info on the wiki page.