Monday, 25 November 2024

Woke Gaming 'Consultants' Epicly Fail at Censoring Gamers, Face Massive Online Backlash

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Woke Gaming 'Consultants' Epicly Fail at Censoring Gamers, Face Massive Online Backlash
Gamer celebrates a WDejan Marjanovic/Getty

An employee of the woke video game narrative consultant firm Sweet Baby Inc. recently attempted to silence a critic on the Steam gaming platform for the crime of listing the games that Sweet Baby Inc. consulted on. The resulting backlash has included a viral spread of anti-woke messaging and Sweet Baby employees and their leftist journalist friends privating their X/Twitter accounts.

Many video game enthusiasts have taken notice of a decline in the quality of game stories and writing in recent years. In many of these cases, one outside consultant group was hired as “narrative consultant,” by major game studios. On it's website, the Montreal-based consultant group Sweet Baby states that it's goal 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 has worked with various prominent studios, including Xbox Game Studios, Electronic Arts (EA), Valve, Sony Santa Monica Studio, 2K, Ubisoft, Square Enix, and Warner Bros. Studios, among others. The company's website lists 12 games they have contributed to, including high-profile titles like Alan Wake II, God of War: Ragnarok, Marvel's Spider-Man 2, and The Crew Motorfest.

As many gamers noticed the poor writing quality of games involving Sweet Baby Inc., one Steam user named Kabrutus decided to develop a warning for fellow game enthusiasts by creating a Steam Curator list that tracks games that Sweet Baby Inc. has worked on. The list currently features 16 titles. Note that Kabrutus' curator list is exactly that — a list that highlights the games that Sweet Baby Inc. has worked on. There is no attack on the company or the quality of the game, simply a confirmation that Sweet Baby consulted on the game's narrative, built based on information posted on the company's own website.

However, this list was viewed as a direct attack by one Sweet Baby employee in particular, Chris Kindred, who attempted to get Kabrutus and his Steam Curator list taken down through a series of posts on X/Twitter Kindred urged others to report the list and its creator, claiming that it violated Steam's code of conduct. Making the censorship campaign even more dastardly, Kindred attempted to get Kabrutus' steam account banned as well. The Brazil-based gamer claims he has spent thousands of dollars on his Steam library over the years, meaning that Kindred was attempting not only to censor his speech, but also to take away his ability to even play video games he purchased.

Kindred's actions unsurprisingly backfired, and his X/Twitter account was temporarily limited, preventing them from posting, liking, or following others for a period of six days and 20 hours. TheParkPlace reports that Kindred shared screenshots of the account limitation on the alternative social media platform BlueSky, expressing frustration and a sense of defeat.

In a series of posts on BlueSky, Kindred revealed the perception that the gaming community harbors a deep-seated resentment towards Sweet Baby and sees the company as a punching bag for broader frustrations with market conditions, studio decisions, and societal changes that challenge certain beliefs.

“They think we're some superfirm funded by blackrock receiving ESG funding and tasked by Some Entity to hold studios hostage,” Kindred wrote, claiming that the community has misconceptions about the company's influence and operations. Kindred also claimed that gamers didn't understand Sweet Baby's role in video game development, however, gamers have been intelligent enough to note that the majority of games that Sweet Baby has been involved with have faced a major decline in writing quality.

Kindred also claimed that Sweet Baby's role often comes into play at the end of a games development cycle and is often “just looking at things.”

However, Sweet Baby's own co-founder, Kim Belair, has publicly described the tactics that the company encourages to “terrify” game developers into hiring them to ensure that their game is “diverse” enough, with the alternative presumably being cancelation from woke leftists. This doesn't sound like the work of a studio that is “just looking at things” at the end of a game's development cycle.

Some other publications have attempted to cover this story, claiming that “gamer trolls” are “harassing” the company — again by simply listing the games that they're involved in. This includes an article from Kotaku in which the publication's Senior Editor Alyssa Mercante hilariously attempted to infiltrate the group's Discord server where she asked hard-hitting questions such as “is there a reason many of you don't have your names/pictures associated with your accounts on here?”

Another key element that has been left out of most reporting on this topic is that Kindred didn't just attempt to shut down the Steam Curator List that highlighted the games that Sweet Baby was involved in, Kindred wanted the Steam account of Kabrutus to be deleted entirely. Kindred not only wanted the Steam Curator List removed but encouraged their followers to report Kabrutus' account in an attempt to delete their entire game library — which could be worth between hundreds and thousands of dollars depending on how many games Kabrutus has purchased over the years.

Despite Kindred's efforts, the Steam Curator list's popularity surged, with its follower count increasing from around 20,000 to over 220,000 as of this writing. Kabrutus, the list's creator, has maintained a commitment to credibility, removing games from the list if the sources for Sweet Baby Inc's involvement are deemed unreliable.

Kabrutus recently posted an update in which he claimed that Steam had responded to a query about the potential deletion of the Curator List and will not be taking any action against the list.

As the gaming community continues to debate the merits of diversity consultant firms, it remains to be seen how Sweet Baby Inc. and its employees will respond to the backlash and whether this will impact their future collaborations with game developers and publishers. So far the company doesn't seem to be taking the criticism too well, taking its official X account private.

As for Kindred, their account was unlocked — but then they insulted Akira Toriyama (the creator of popular Japanese anime Dragon Ball Z) following his recent passing and almost immediately had to make their account private following backlash.

Breitbart News will continue to report on leftist censorship campaigns.

Lucas Nolan is a reporter for Breitbart News covering issues of free speech and online censorship.


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