I'd sooner trust a company that is inept by now knowing how to makes saves work (sky) than a company that intentionally bricks their customer's hardware (gateway).
How quickly we forget that GW was eager to screw users. Now everyone treats them like canonized saints, harbingers of freedom, warriors of superb service. Until they change their mind and start bricking again.
Your choice. Never got any bricks with the Gateway and people that got one got a new 3DS from them (of course, legit users only. If you buy a clone and get bricked, I don't see why gateway should replace your 3DSm it's the company which sold you the clone that should replace/fix your 3DS). The brick has never been done to brick gateway users at the beginning but to brick clones, which is a completely different thing.
Here, you have a company which don't assume they tried to screw you, and don't even offer to replace the cart for first users, and as they know their limit won't make them sell anymore products, they remove it.
And as it been said, Nintendo also bricked some systems, so you just won't play most systems at all? I think we saw some bricks on near every game system (PSP, DS, PS3, 360, Wii, etc...).
But if you don't trust one, you should rather not trust the other part, who also tried to scam you.
Sky3DS is still cool for people who already updated, though (but one of the problem is that only run original games will block any fan translations, for example).
I wouldn't cry about a brick anyway, if you use an illegal device, you might lose, it's life. People who fear such thing shouldn't use such devices. With the money spare with the game, you should have plenty enough money to buy a new one if that happen (I got my 4.5 JPN 3DS for less than 80 dollars on Yahoo Auctions so it's pretty cheap).
I have another 3DS (9.2) with a lot of original games (like thirty games) so I wouldn't even need to buy a new one immediately. I mainly use the gateway for foreign games/vc games, and would never have bought one if the 3DS would have been free-region). Pokemon RO/SA is working on gateway and though, I still bought an original cart xD