Over the past week, social media conspiracy theorists and loud-mouth gaming content creators have made Sweet Baby Inc. their number one target.
Based in Montreal and founded in 2018, Sweet Baby Inc. says on its website that its “mission is to tell better, more empathetic stories while diversifying and enriching the video games industry.” The studio has worked with large developers like Valve, EA, and Warner Brothers. It has helped produce some of the biggest budget games of the last few years — like God of War Ragnarok, Alan Wake 2, and Spider-Man 2.
But, with little evidence, anti-woke ideologues have blamed Sweet Baby Inc. for all sorts of problems, from massive studio layoffs to declining game sales.
Conspiracy theorists have labeled the company as one of the driving forces behind acronyms DEI (diversity, equity, and inclusion) and ESG (environmental, social, and governance) being pushed into games. Mary Jane looks “manlier” in Spider-Man 2, and there’s a black female protagonist in Alan Wake 2 — so according to these gamers, there’s got to be a connection.
But if you look at the details and explore the story, as some brave journalists have done, you can see how and why this is all a bunch of hogwash.
“The assumption will always be that our focus is going to be on DEI. But the reality often is that we do more narrative work,” Sweet Baby CEO Kim Belair told Aftermath. “We’re a narrative consultancy. We’re not in charge of placements, we’re not in charge of building teams.”
In October 2023, a 4chan user on the /v/ video games board discussing Alan Wake 2 shared their discovery of Sweet Baby Inc.’s involvement in the game. The user described the company as “some nameless ESG company to make the safest slop possible” — despite having no evidence that the company influenced ESG initiatives in the game. …
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