Sweet Baby Inc. has become the focus of some gamers’ ire on social media, but what happened and why should you care? Here’s everything you need to know about the latest discourse in the gaming industry from an impartial and fact-based viewpoint.
The Shortcut is a reader-supported publication – without banner ads and completely independent. We’re now the #1 consumer tech site on Substack. Please support our work with a FREE or PAID subscription.
The company’s About Us section says: “Founded in 2018, Sweet Baby Inc. is a narrative development and consultation studio based in Montreal and working around the globe. Our mission is to tell better, more empathetic stories while diversifying and enriching the video games industry. We aim to make games more engaging, more fun, more meaningful, and more inclusive, for everyone.”
Sweet Baby Inc. has worked on several high-profile titles such as God of War Ragnarok, Marvel’s Spider-Man 2, Alan Wake and Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League. Its clients include Xbox Game Studios, Ubisoft, Square Enix, Rocksteady, EA, Wizards of the Coast, and practically all the big-name players in the industry.
What does Sweet Baby Inc. do?
According to the company’s website, Sweet Baby Inc. “bring in diverse voices to solve diverse problems. Sweet Baby Inc. provides narrative consultation at any stage of development, boasting a team of diverse talent with vetted industry experience to best bring your story to life.”
Here’s a comprehensive list of what Sweet Baby Inc. can potentially work on if it’s hired:
Writing: Cinematics, Dialogue, UI/UX writing, Barks, Copywriting, Etc.
Narrative: Story pitches,World Building, Character Creation, Narrative Design, Story Feedback and Tweaks, and more.
Representation: Cultural Consultation, Sensitivity And Inclusivity Reading, Risk and Opportunities Assessment, and more.
Development: Full-scale Game Development and Interactive Fiction.
The controversy began after a Sweet Baby Inc. employee Chris Kindred highlighted a Steam Curator group called ‘Sweet Baby Inc. Detected’ on X (formerly known as Twitter). Kindred has since deleted these posts but they’ve been documented below.
Kindred accused the group of harassment, tagged the creator and Steam, and said, “Even with the discriminatory language filed off, the group itself still fails the code of conduct.”
Kindred then asked their followers to “report the f*** out of this group” and to report the creator “since he loves his account so much”.
Kindred was subsequently banned for six days for breaching X’s policies on targeted harassment.
Another Sweet Baby Inc. employee, Felix Maya Kramer, also weighed in on the Steam Curator group and said: “For example, Steam doesn’t have guidelines for curators (as far as I can tell) that would prevent someone from starting a curation group that focuses on, say, Sweet Baby Inc and…warns people to not buy games they’re associated with? which could just list any game at all??”
Kramer’s post received a Community Note, as the Sweet Baby Inc. Detected page provides links to sources that prove the company’s involvement in each game listed. It also doesn’t tell anyone not to buy games the company has worked on; it merely lists them.
Kramer and Kindred’s attempts to ban the ‘Sweet Baby Inc. Detected’ Steam Curator group, resulted in a huge backlash from some gamers online and raised questions about the company as a whole. Unfortunately, this context is missing from Sweet Baby Inc.’s Wikipedia page, which tells a rather one-sided version of the event.
What is Sweet Baby Inc. Detected?
‘Sweet Baby Inc. Detected’ is a Steam Curator group created by X user kabrutusrambo that highlights games Sweet Baby Inc. has been involved with and a link to sources that back up those claims. The list only includes games on Steam, hence why a title like Alan Wake 2 is missing as it’s exclusive to the Epic Games Store.
Users can follow the group, which now has over 270,000 members, if they’d like to avoid purchasing Sweet Baby Inc. titles in the future or at least be made aware of their involvement.
So far, according to our research, the group does not ask people to boycott or target these games negatively in any way. As the group’s ‘About’ page states, Sweet Baby Inc. Detected is: “A tracker for games involved with Sweet Baby Inc.”
You can read our exclusive interview with the Sweet Baby Inc. detected creator Kabrutus for more.
In a nutshell, Sweet Baby Inc. has been accused of making games worse in a bid to help companies meet their ESG (environmental, social, governance) and DEI (diversity, equity, inclusion) targets. It’s also come under fire for allegedly forcing its employees’ political ideologies into the games it has worked on.
Due to the recent backlash, concerning comments from Sweet Baby Inc.’s CEO Kim Belair have resurfaced that have only added fuel to the fire, as well as other controversial statements from its employees.
Speaking at the Game Developers Conference in 2019, Belair said: “If you’re a creative working in triple-A, put this stuff up to your higher-ups. And if they don’t see the value of what you’re asking for when you ask for consultants, when you ask for research, go have a coffee with your marketing team and just terrify them with the possibility of what’s gonna happen if they don’t give you what you want.”
Old posts from Sweet Baby Inc. employee Felix Kramer also paint a rather disturbing picture and viewpoint on male, white gamers. They wrote “Pay me to shoot down your white male lead game ideas” and “had a nightmare that I was a white male gamer”.
Another ex-Sweet Baby Inc. employee named Dani LaLonders admitted to not hiring “white people” in an interview with Game Devs of Color Expo and said “Sometimes it is hard to work with white people” and because they wanted to “create a safe environment”, free of microaggressions.
LaLonders is currently the narrative designer at Cliffhanger Games, an EA-owned studio that’s working on a game based on Marvel’s Black Panther.
Should you care about Sweet Baby Inc.’s involvement in video games?
That’s entirely up to you. Some people won’t care that Sweet Baby Inc. is involved in the creation of many beloved games and franchises and may see it as a positive, while others will see it as problematic and unnecessary.
However, for a company that is supposedly proud of its work and wants to make the gaming industry a safer and more inclusive space, seeing its employees try to ban a Steam Curator group and cancel the creator for simply highlighting its involvement seems at odds with that message.
Here are some of the games Sweet Baby Inc. has worked on in some capacity, be it story consultation, sensitivity reading, narrative direction and design, character voice, writing, scriptwriting, game development, or cultural and character consultation.
Alan Wake 2
After Love EP
Assassin’s Creed Valhalla
Battle Shapers
Breeze in the Clouds
Contraband
DOTA Underlords
Dungeons & Dragons: Dark Alliance
Flintlock: The Siege of Dawn
Goodbye Volcano High
God of War Ragnarok
Gotham Knights
Hyper Light Breaker
Kingdom Eighties
Lost Your Marbles
Marvel’s Spider-Man 2
Marvel’s Wolverine
Neo Cab
Recommendation Dog
Reel Steal
Sable
Shadow Gambit: The Cursed Crew
South of Midnight
Space Tow Truck
Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League
Tales of Kenzera: ZAU
The Crew Motorfest
Quantum Phantom Basketball
Unknown 9: Awakening
Usual June
