Controversy erupted on X over the weekend when professional Woke Cult purity assurance coven Sweet Baby Inc. issued a fatwa against a scrappy Brazilian vidya curator.
The curator, Sweet Baby Inc Detected, describes itself simply as “A tracker for games involved with Sweet Baby Inc.”
The About page from SBI’s web site states:
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.
One might think that a creator services company would welcome a third party curator enhancing the visibility of its work. In the age of digital marketing, discoverability is the key to success.
Yet SBI’s response was less than enthusiastic. Pop culture news site Fandom Pulse has the story:
Since Sweet Baby Inc. came into notoriety, they have locked down their Twitter account. Many of Sweet Baby Inc.’s projects have been left in the shadows, knowing that if anyone catches a whiff of Sweet Baby Inc.’s stench on a game, then its sales would plummet or be non-existent. Fortunately, there is a Steam user by the name of Kabrutus who has set up a Steam curator account to point out games that Sweet Baby Inc. got their claws into called ‘Sweet Baby Inc detected.’ It has become a helpful curator account as it points out which games Sweet Baby Inc. has worked on. As of this writing, this Steam curator account has 13,203 followers and is expected to climb higher. As many as 18 games are currently on this curator list, with more games added as time goes on.
Unfortunately, this curator page on Steam has attracted the attention of Sweet Baby Inc.’s Narrative Designer, Chris Kindred. Upon discovering the curator page, he made the following tweets:
Related: The Price of Fun
What motive could a “narrative development and consultation studio” have for trying to silence an independent curator shining a spotlight on its work?
Author David V. Stewart put together this video to address the question:
Video game players and professionals took to X to investigate the mystery. One clue turned up on the timeline of a self-described SBI consultant:
Legendary Diablo II and World of Warcraft co-designer Mark Kern explained.
Related: The Riddle of the Pop Cult
Readers will long memories will remember Zoe Quinn as the disgraced game developer whose questionable professional conduct ignited the GamerGate consumer revolt.
In contrast to that crusade for ethics in games journalism, the SBI vs Kabrutus controversy seems to have reached a swift and decisive conclusion.
While it’s likely that Sweet Baby Inc will continue operations despite its PR disaster, this consumer victory may be a sign that gamers are no longer willing to do business with companies that hate them.
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