Despite building an entire business on forcefully injecting identity politics into video games, employees of the “inclusion-focused” narrative consultation company Sweet Baby Inc. are absolutely livid that a Steam user has begun taking steps to ensure the public knows exactly which specific titles they’ve worked on.
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A self-described “inclusion-focused narrative and consultation company”, Sweet Baby Inc.’s main objective is to review and edit a given video script through the lens of “diversity and inclusion”.
“Our mission is to tell better, more empathetic stories while diversifying and enriching the video games industry,” writes the company on their official website. “We aim to make games more engaging, more fun, more meaningful, and more inclusive, for everyone.”
“We believe that representation is key to connecting players and audiences,and we offer a few ways to help your team and project gain the perspective needed to make it happen,” their mission statement continues. “We’re part of an inclusive and knowledgeable community of diverse consultants, able to cover a wide range of cultural and sensitivity topics. Our approach leads with the creation of joy in marginalized players, and seeks to be additive rather than strictly corrective.”
Most notably, Sweet Baby Inc. have provided sensitivity reading for Alan Wake 2 and Goodbye Volcano High, narrative and character consultation “with a focus on representation” for God of War: Ragnarok, story consultation for Marvel’s Spider-Man 2, and script-writing duties (including cutscenes and banter) for Suicide Squad: Kill The Justice League.
They have also provided unspecified support to Xbox Game Studios, EA, Valve, Santa Monica Studio, 2K, Ubisoft, Square Enix, Warner Bros. Games, Wizards of the Coast, and more.
In light of both their self-declared mission and the many questionable narrative decisions seen in the games they’ve worked on – such as the race-swapping of the Norse god Angrboda in God of War: Ragnarok or pretty much every piece of dialogue in Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League – recent years have seen Sweet Baby Inc. come to be seen as a key player in the Western video game industry’s ongoing deference to ESG and DEI philosophies.
To this end, the tail-end of February 2024 saw an unsatisfied player create a public Steam Curator page, aptly titled “Sweet Baby Inc detected“, with the intent of warning others regarding which titles available on the platform featured the company’s handiwork.
Alongside marking each relevant title as ‘Not Recommended’, the page also provides proof – often screenshots of the company’s own website and tweets – of Sweet Baby Inc.’s involvement in a given title.
Despite this list being curated both based on publicly available information and with an intent to warn consumers no different than those at the heart of similar Steam Curator pages which bring attention to instances of censorship or Denuvo DRM, the fact that it centered on their work specifically led to a public outcry over its existence from Sweet Baby Inc. employees.
The first was consultant Maya Felix Kramer, who voiced her objection to the page amidst a Twitter thread decrying the recent speculation that audiences’ rejection of DEI initiatives have played some part in the ongoing wave of video game industry layoffs.
“I get to see a lot of tweets somehow blaming ‘diversity’ as the reason for layoffs genuinely as if the economy was doing really great and capitalism simply worked before Miles Morales was Spider-Man* (*they also don’t recognize Miles as Spider-Man)” began Kramer, whose work history also includes stints as a PR manager for GamerGate instigator Zoe Quinn and an employee of the SilverString Media consultancy firm (which notably once served infamous feminist gaming “critic” Anita Sarkeesian).
“The weirdest part is when i see these takes from developers, or people who have dev bios at least,” she then passive aggressively asserted, “idk it seems wild that a dev would see thousands of layoffs and blame not the industry giants but instead a 15 person narrative company founded by a black woman”.
“These people think a company of narrative designers that freelances on projects has somehow single handedly caused the employment collapse in games, instead of, you know, the insane notion of infinite growth or capitalist greed,” Kramer further bleated. “It’s easier to blame diversity than that somehow”.
“I still think it’s way more likely that they know that’s not the case and are just fine with looking stupid so long as it justifies them being loudly anti-woke whatever that means (we all know what it means)” wrote the Sweet Baby Inc. employee.
“The other part of this is it doesn’t matter if you tell them the truth,” she then claimed. “They think ‘DEI’ just steps in and changes whole games: that creators are forced by some unseen hand (The govt, blackrock?? I guess? As well as just poc in general) to make games more inclusive???”
“Fighting misinformation would be great! but social media + youtube is not equipped to hold people accountable to doing real research in good faith,” her blustering went on. “Just getting hits and proving their point in the absence of confirmation. it’s wild out there. Nothing has changed. Nothing.”
Offering a sarcastic caveat to her previous statement, Kramer next declared, “Sorry no one thing has changed: The number of people who understand that spreading misinformation just lets them be racist in public with no consequence has increased dramatically.”
“That has changed,” she said. “Probably requires some fighting from those with authority!”
Finally getting to the Steam Curator page, Kramer criticized, “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??”
Unfortunately for the consultant, rather than the support of the internet’s most self-important authoritarians, her alarmist concern instead drew the attention of Twitter’s Community Notes team, who in response to the above tweet revealed that not only did the Steam Curator page avoid the issue of ‘false association’ by citing Sweet Baby Inc.’s own public work listings, but she was also an employee of the very company she was running to defend.
However, rather than admit to her misunderstanding of the situation, Kramer instead responded to the Community Note by protesting, “It’s pretty funny to see a note on my Steam Curator post. I guess they need to defend themselves because they’re completely wrong about everything Sweet Baby (or any narrative team) does and have no interest in finding out!”
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Next up was Sweet Baby Inc. writer Chris Kindred (@itskindred), who took a more direct approach to expressing his anger by directly calling for his followers to engage in a mass reporting campaign against the list.
“The @Steam curator harassment group Sweet Baby Inc detected is lead by this person, @kabrutusrambo,” said Kindred. “Here’s them trying to be slick so they don’t get reported. Even with the discriminatory language filed off, the group itself still fails the code of conduct.”
In the screenshots shared by Kindred, @Kabrutusrambo can be seen allegedly confirming that he started the list “to make people aware of those who try to corrupt our beloved hobby” and declaring his intent to use more “neutral” language in order to avoid any bans or reports.
“Anyway report the f–k out this group,” Kindred continued his offensive.
He further called on his followers to “report the creator since he loves his account so much”.
However, since beating his chest so publicly, Kindred has both deleted all of his above tweets on the topic and set his account to private. The official Sweet Baby Inc. Twitter account has also locked their account.
As for the Steam Curator group, a Streisand Effect resulting from Kramer and Kindred’s efforts has led its membership to increase from 9,263 followers on February 29th to 68,240 on March 2nd – an increase of over 630%.
The attention has also done little to perturb the curator himself, @Kabrutusrambo, as recent days have seen him retweeting memes (including one we approve of), embracing the name “Krampus Rambo” thanks to YouTuber Asmongold, and boasting about having received a block from Kindred.
Kabrutusrambo also thanked those who showed him support.
“Man I was almost forgetting how fun can internet be, thanks everybody for all the messages and support,” he wrote. “Let’s put the keys of the gaming industry back in the players hands.”
