The Second Coming of Gamergate
Getting a fair picture of what SBI, let alone Gamergate 2, is can seem daunting. Yet there's much more to this than conspiracy over one small company.
If anyone familiar with video games were asked what consultancy firm Sweet Baby Inc. (SBI) does at the start of 2024, chances are they wouldn’t be aware of what it even was. If one tried to make a connection between that and the Gamergate controversy, as I touched on through the lens of the KotakuInAction subreddit back in December 15, 2023, it would seem outright preposterous. Yet lately, that doesn’t seem so crazy anymore.
Founded in 2018, as explained on its own website, SBI is a Montreal-based narrative development and consultation studio with the aim of making games more empathetic and representative. This is achieved, ostensibly, by providing “narrative consultation at any stage of development, boasting a team of diverse talent with vetted industry experience to best bring your story to life.” Ranging from narrative designs and dialogue to cultural consultation and inclusivity reading, its work goes broadly in line with both Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI), and Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) trends popular among certain investors. In practice, this also comes across as leaving considerations for gameplay and overall content almost secondary.
Since 2021, Sweet Baby Inc. has been involved with not only indie gaming but also AAA titles such as Assassins’ Creed: Valhalla, and Alan Wake 2. It is by no means unique in this regard, being only one of many consultants hired within the Western industry. Over the past month, however, it has become a focal point for scathing criticism and backlash online, especially following an underhanded response to a Steam group listing its work.
There has been a flurry of hitpieces from media outlets and SBI supporters. Among the most highly-charged of these being a statement on March 11 from a non-profit organization called Take This, Inc., which not only lambasted critics as bigoted reactionaries and conspiratorial extremists, but had helped popularize the term “Gamergate 2” among journalists. In the span of a month, the situation has rapidly grown in scale and scope beyond just online drama.
Getting a fair picture of what SBI, let alone the Second Coming of Gamergate, from sites like Wikipedia is a fools’ errand in light of the above, while pieces like Adam Vjestica’s informative op-ed for The Shortcut on March 11, 2024 have been by far more the exception than the norm. It still begs the question of what to make of all this, how it got to this point, and what happens next.
The Catalyst
Some, like members of KotakuInAction had kept tabs on the company as early as October 2023, which touched on its involvement in helping with the writing for God of War Ragnarok and Spider-Man 2. At the time, most had barely even known of its existence, me included. Even I had admittedly downplayed SBI when covering the subreddit, initially viewing KiA’s fixation on it, DEI and ESG as akin to grasping for a new archenemy, much as how Feminist Frequency had been 10 years earlier.
This isn’t to say that they were making a mountain out of nothing. In a three-part November 4, 2023 podcast hosted by Side Scrollers host Craig Skistimas, there was a lengthy discussion about SBI that focused on how it’s pushed ideas like race-swapping a Norse goddess in God of War: Ragnarok in the name of diversity as positive change, even when it’s little different from whitewashing in practice. Meanwhile, from inside industry circles, there was a November 13 Game Developer (formerly Gamasutra) feature about Remedy Entertainment’s Alan Wake 2 highlighting CEO Kim Belair’s influence in helping overhaul co-protagonist Saga as a working African-American mother, though the article’s wording left the extent of her involvement ambiguous at best. Regardless, be it due to games like Spider-Man 2 still being profitable enough to escape deeper scrutiny (at least superficially) or the notion of all this being of little relevance to gamers, one would have likely been inclined to agree that this was much ado over niche drama. That assessment proved wrong.
Arguably the first mainstream exposure to the consultants’ handiwork was through Rocksteady Studios’ Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League on January 30, 2024. The game was released with lukewarm critical (and more negative fan) reception. In addition to technical and gameplay flaws, there were questionable creative decisions. Whether it’s the lore for Wonder Woman reading like a screed against toxic masculinity, or Batman’s defeat by Harley Quinn coming off as an out-of-character political rant, the writing did more of a disservice to the source material than anything else. While SBI involvement’s had been known within some gaming circles since as early as November 2023, it wasn’t long before the wider consumer base also made the connection given how many of its employees, including former developers who joined the group over the course of production, were credited.
Around the same time as that game’s launch, a Brazilian gamer known only as Kabrutus began work on a Steam Curator group known as “Sweet Baby Inc. Detected”, which went live on February 26, 2024. With over 324,000 followers as of March 24, its sole purpose is strictly to track titles with said company’s handiwork on Valve’s Steam platform, alongside links backing up claims (lifted almost entirely from the official website and newsletters). While the creator openly admitted to not playing some of the games listed like Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League, as revealed in a March 4 conversation with gaming streamer Asmongold, and later repeated in The Shortcut’s March 20 interview, he nonetheless found the way the source material in titles like it had been treated oddly, which led him to research more into what SBI had been up to.
At worst, this could be said to be framing such involvement with negative connotations. Moreover, it initially included a few titles that later turned out to have little-to-no connection with the consultancy firm at all, such as Saints Row and Starfield, due to being mentioned on IMDb (which turned out to be unreliable). In response, the creator not only acknowledging the error but having these removed by March 2 to improve accountability. Nonetheless, at no point are there calls for targeted boycotts, let alone harassing developers, on its main page, affiliated forums, and Discord server, implicit or otherwise. The nascent community that formed around it was, and remains, noted as encompassing myriad backgrounds, ethnicities and political leanings from across the globe, especially other Brazilians.
This did not stop a certain Chris Kindred, within a few days of the group going active, from accusing it of harassment, and other breaches of Steam’s code of conduct. An illustrator, developer and narrative developer for SBI, he used his presence on Twitter/X in since-deleted posts to call on followers and allies to not only file false reports, but to have Kabrutus’ personal Steam access revoked since “he loves his account so much.” Putting aside how this would have also removed the creator’s access to purchased games (generally more expensive in Brazil), it led to Kindred being banned for six days, ironically for breaking the social media platform’s own rules.
Maya Felix Kramer, another prominent employee, had also joined in trying to get the curator banned. At the end of a long Twitter thread starting at February 28, insinuating that anyone criticizing games with her company’s involvement was spreading conspiratorial rhetoric in order “to avoid inclusivity,” they accused not only the group of spreading misinformation (despite the content in question being publicly available) but also Steam itself of condoning such behavior. Though she wasn’t penalized for her actions (with her employer’s official social media accounts going private) and the repeated attempts to “cancel” the creator ultimately failed, all this achieved was attract more attention.
Streisand Effect
It was somewhat unsurprising that those fixated on gaming drama and others aligned with the “anti-woke” corners of the culture wars were among the earliest ones to cover the situation within a week of those incidents. Nonetheless, alternative media sites and YouTube commentators, including such groups, played a major role in helping draw attention to SBI.
Niche Gamer, among the first sites to cover Steam Baby Inc. Detected in a February 28 editorial, was also one of the first to break the story the following day. Meanwhile, Haitian-born Youtuber ItsAGundam’s March 4 video (receiving over 430,000 views) not only also drew attention to Kramer’s role during the height of the original Gamergate, from sabotaging a rival women-only game jam to being a board member of the since-defunct Feminist Frequency, but also highlighted the backlash that had already been spreading throughout social media.
This also extended beyond the usual suspects. Asmongold wasn’t particularly known for talking about politics or hot-botton issues directly, yet his interview with Kabrutus on March 4 was one of the first to go live on YouTube. His coverage discussing SBI similarly had gained significant traction, with one of his videos on it since garnering over 682,000 views. Other popular commentators, such as Mutahar “SomeOrdinaryGamers” Anas, soon followed in shedding light on the situation. Increasingly, it was no longer just backroom industry hijinks.
While some Sweet Baby employees remained vocal on social media, such as former Rocksteady developer Grant Roberts branding gamers critical of them as “joining a weird cult,” there was a palpable silence from the company’s official accounts, as well as more established outlets. That changed on March 6, when Kotaku‘s Alyssa Mercante released a lengthy article which downplayed what SBI and companies like it do for clients, while framing criticisms as deranged nonsense. Similar pieces came out over the following days almost like clockwork, from major games media sites like PC Gamer and Eurogamer, the latter also taking jabs at critics over Alan Wake 2. Eventually, not only did activist publications like The Mary Sue join the bandwagon, but so did mainstream media ones like The Guardian and WIRED.
A recurring thread has been to both present their work as an industry standard that was occurring naturally, and strawman the opposing argument as reactionary scapegoating against a small company for all that’s wrong with modern gaming, complete with quotes from Belair about how she and her staff are being harassed by people out “to diminish our accomplishments to our identities.” With the notable exception of The Shortcut’s March 20 interview, there was likewise little-to-no meaningful effort to reach out to Kabrutus (a mixed-race Brazilian who’s half indigenous), let alone other critics for comment, other than broad, selective accusations. Instead, there has been a tendency, as seen in the PC Gamer piece, to make it look like they were the instigators and that SBI are mere victims, whether through omitting details, scrubbing any online evidence, or outright lying.
It’s telling as well how the articles came across as glorified promotions for not only SBI but DEI or ESG-compliant “progress” overall as an acceptable industry norm, complete with favorable testimonies from Insomniac Games and Remedy. In addition having to their platforms become echo-chambers, with moderators in some popular communities on Reddit helping take down opposing posts, those same journalists and commentators also branded gamers who disagreed as either conspiratorial white American conservatives prone to spreading fake news, or especially in the case of German outlet GameStar, far-right extremists no better than Nazis and thus, required brisk action. That there was a palpable silence when both Kindred himself and freelance journalist Ryan Easby attempted invoking cancel culture against Asmongold on March 15, speaks volumes about what that “empathy” means in practice.
As the KiA thread compiling these pieces bluntly noted, it was the “Gamers are Dead” smears all over again. These instead brought further attention not only to SBI, but other companies like it. By March 14, not only had it caught the interest of Twitter/X CEO Elon Musk, but within a few days he openly sided with the critics, drawing even more eyes on the affair.
Thus, in another echo of the original Gamergate, the Streisand effect was out in force, in both exposure and what was being uncovered.
Skeletons in the Closet
As time passed, peculiar details came back to the limelight, including those concerning Belair. During a speech at the 2019 Game Developers Conference (GDC), the CEO was on record describing white cisgendered gamers as “picky babies who won’t eat their vegetables,” and enthusiastically talking about how she’d intimidate the marketing teams and leads of clients, to “terrify them” with what would happen if they didn’t follow SBI’s advice. With how she made similar comments in a 2021 interview by activist group Inclusion FX, this was not an isolated gaffe. As highlighted by indie developer Aaron Alexander in an in-depth March 6 feature for Fandom Pulse, there’s also distressing tendency towards self-victimhood and racism against “whiteness,” while broadly blaming men who don’t stand with her or her views as enabling if not are themselves predators in the industry. To say that these run contrary to any empathetic or creative initiative would be an understatement.
Bounding into Comics EIC John Trent noted in his personal website on March 4 how fellow Sweet Baby Kramer had even more skeletons in their closet. They had been particularly vocal through social media in expressing open disdain, if not outright bigotry, towards white men in the gaming industry, going back to January 2014. As Alexander showed in a March 12 follow-up, however, this didn’t remain in the past tense. On top of notoriety from the original Gamergate and past collaboration with Sarkeesian (who’s since positioned herself as a consultant),as well as marketing work for a group with a similar modus operandi called Silverstring Media (predating SBI by seven years), their behavior online had remained unchanged between then and 2024. As recently as December 21, 2023, they weren’t above virtue-signaling or playing the victim even years after the supposed fact, if it meant that their industry connections remained.
As people investigated other long-suspected games, even those with no clear Sweet Baby involvement at all, certain inconvenient details also came to light. As early as March 2, Youtuber Devon "ShortFatOtaku" Del Vecchio held a long interview with an anonymous developer from now-defunct Volition, its poorly-received Saints Row from 2022 floundering due to horrible game design and lacking the creativity of its predecessors. It was found that, turbulent production notwithstanding, the role played by DEI consultants (such as activist firm GaymerX) in stoking discord among staff – including counterproductive “inclusivity sessions” that led to the studio’s remaining non-white staff leaving – was about as significant as the investors and executives greenlighting those decisions, as though ESG would have guaranteed success.
In the case of Luminous Productions’ Forspoken, which already gained notoriety for such abysmal reviews that Square Enix folded the studio a month after its January 2023 release, attention turned to Black Girl Gamers. Founded in 2015, it had been brought on for creative assistance, with CEO Jay-Ann Lopez blaming the failure on, among others, an “ability for a, frankly, racist audience to tank a game's performance.” The company’s grandstanding about harassment following the attempts to silence Kabrutus, however, brought attention to a job promotion tweet posted on February 19, 2024, targeting African-American female applicants only. Given what some of their allies have endorsed, including a former Sweet Baby alumni working on Electronic Arts’ upcoming Marvel’s Black Panther standing for hiring practices based on race and gender as offering “safe” spaces from whites, it’s anything but a bad joke.
It is not hard to conclude that such consultants are not only pushing questionable agendas to the detriment of gamers and developers alike, whether the latter go along out of fear or agreement, but are also being protected by industry connections and the media. When those same people go out of their way to harass and silence anyone shedding light on their work, the idea that it is just a hate campaign against one company seems even more ludicrous. Such is the second coming of Gamergate.
Escalation and Exploitation
This “sequel” is shaping up to be anything but a retread of 2014, though much could still go awry. On top of the proverbial atmosphere having changed since the original Gamergate, there are those who’ve sought to take advantage of the outrage within Western gaming, be it through escalation or naked opportunism.
One such person is Dr. Rachel Kowert, Take This Inc.’s Research Director and the author behind the March 11 statement that helped cement Gamergate 2 among journalists. While her public bio flaunts her academic credentials on video games, freelance reporter Brad Glasgow noted in 2022 and 2023 how she actively pushed for (and received) grants from the US Department of Homeland Security to study “extremism and terrorist recruitment, especially among white nationalist and white supremacists groups” among gamers, with a white paper on February 9, 2024 including acknowledgement of said funding. Never mind that a major inspiration behind her work was a 2019 Anti-Defamation League report which claimed that 23% of gamers were exposed to white supremacy.
On March 14, 2024, jumping on the bandwagon around SBI, the ADL promoted an opinion piece by New York University policy advisor Mariana Olaizola Rosenblat, both parties calling for the need to have video games and “toxic gamer culture” regulated to stop extremism. Disregarding how there is little evidence supporting the link between gaming and aggression, let alone radicalization, this did not stop the group from publishing a report decrying “hate and harassment” on February 6 that called for sweeping controls and anti-extremist legislation, while inadvertently admitting to how it had consistently used flawed and oversampled survey results. Neither did such faulty work stop it from backing a Canadian government-supported initiative pushing similar ideas called the Extremism and Gaming Research Network, which includes other NGOs, contributors, and activist donors, including Dr. Kowert.
While some exploit Gamergate 2 to advance censorious precedents and for grant money, others see ripe ground for grifting and culture war-baiting, especially with the US elections on the horizon. A rather infamous case involved Daily Wire firebrand Matt Walsh, who on March 13, released a video decrying the gaming industry for indoctrinating children into wokeness, with DEI and ESG treated like a relentless tide. Given his prior track record of criticizing games and nerddom in general as violence-inducing degeneracy, such grandstanding rings hollow. Little better are those like Malaysia-based Ian Miles Cheong, who’ve latched on to the affair as a stepping stone in “a bigger war to be fought,” never mind that he had also defended Walsh’s attempts in 2023 as a vehicle for pushing the latter’s brand of right-wing American politics. Alas, it doesn’t take much nowadays to stoke outrage mobs.
It is not hard to see how these developments are poisoning the well with how the gaming industry is perceived, and not necessarily just in the West. When such consultants, and sympathetic developers, are willing to not just smear those who disagree as bigots or manbabies but also ruin them, the line between good-faith diversity and inclusion, and the kind of wokeness seen as forced down audiences’ throats has increasingly blurred. Where previously most average gamers wouldn’t pay much mind to such issues in discourse (glaring fiascos aside), this sense of mutual distrust raises the odds of making outrage and factionalism the default, while others risk getting caught in the crossfire, even simply for guilt-by-association.
Shades of this could be seen among some Gamergate “veterans” like those on KiA. Even a cursory look past the front page is enough to notice that what was noted back in 2023 not only remains relevant but has grown more pronounced. With apparent validation of the cynicism and pessimism expressed by certain old guard members, why bother reaching out with those they’re certain are just SJWs or woke allies? Why give the benefit of the doubt to studios whose titles are no doubt spreading the wrong message? Why show empathy to those who absolutely hate them, when the enemy gives none?
The pieces, then, are seemingly in place for another familiar narrative to take hold. One of endless culture wars, hate begetting hate, and collateral damage in the name of advancing some amorphous greater good, seeing their enemies suffer, or for personal gain. It need not wind up like this.
Learning, not Repeating
The mere fact that Youtubers and non-mainstream commentators were the first to cover the SBI situation to begin with, and with greater traction to boot, have underscored how, for better or worse, they have more influence than ever. Considering how Kotaku itself has faced significant internal and financial turmoil since March 21, as spotlighted recently by Asmongold, over an editorial pivot away from news suggests that such claims aren’t mere hyperbole. That other games journalists and more established media outlets, meanwhile, not only waited too long before doling out their spiels but rehashed much of the same rhetoric from the original “Gamers are Dead” smears suggests that those cliques have failed to adapt to a changing landscape.
The way said groups and individuals have doubled-down on promoting DEI or ESG-compliant progress during the 2024 GDC in San Francisco seems to underscore this observation. Be it slipping in speaking events with SBI and Take This Inc.’s involvement as part of the itinerary, or politically divisive panels that would have been brushed aside as censorious and politically correct back in 2009, it’s served to lay the conceit clear to gamers and other developers alike. None, though, quite exemplify this paradoxical mix of entitlement, hubris, and complacency than the media-promoted “GDScream” event, meant to protest both industry layoffs and supposed harassment from Gamergate 2, but was instead ridiculed due to its tone-deaf execution and small attendance, raising questions over whether they have learned anything.
The overall atmosphere within the wider gaming space has also put that the sort of change being encouraged may not be as profitable or desirable as advertised. As Kabrutus himself remarked in the March 20 interview, diversity has not really been a problem in gaming for a long time, especially when it is done naturally or as its own original concept. It’s when the likes of SBI are trying to convert other well-established audiences “into liking what they believe people should like” that it’s driving said crowds away. Setting aside the much-publicized blunders of titles like Forspoken and Suicide Squad, the parallel trend of criticizing industry giants like Blizzard for pandering to LGBT groups in titles like Overwatch 2 to cover up wrongdoing or lack of quality, as well as a broader decline in ESG across the board by the start of 2024, lend weight to that sentiment.
Having witnessed and studied what happened then and more recently, it is not too surprising that the critics have grown savvier. Some like as Youtuber “Upper Echelon” Zakrzewski on March 13 and reporter Sophia Narwitz the following day, believe that through calm yet persistent critique, engagement with those on the fence, and resisting the call of culture war ideologues, the nascent movement would be able to rob Sweet Baby’s allies the ammunition needed to make their narrative stick. This is something inadvertedly validated by The Verge’s Ash Parrish on March 18, when despite her inflammatory hitpiece, she admitted to both omitting “decent conversation” with members of Sweet Baby Inc. Detected on social media and leaving out the actual timeline of what transpired to fit the editorial line.
More than exposés and plans for a more expansive version of the Steam group covering titles with any DEI involvement, there has also been a more constructive push. Following a March 20 roundtable discussion hosted by Youtuber Jeremy “Geeks + Gamers” Griggs, both Kabrutus and former Blizzard executive Mark “Grummz” Kern went beyond expressing a clear refusal to pander towards culture warriors for short-term gain. Rather, they have both actively reached out to developers either having second thoughts, or outright rejecting those consultancy groups. Once more reiterating their belief that Gamergate 2 is as much respectful to creators as to gamers. Already, a studio that worked with SBI for its upcoming Flintlock: The Siege of Dawn had recently claimed to be removing Sweet Baby influence in said title, though it remains to be seen what comes of this.
Indeed, much of that could be said for Gamergate’s Second Coming overall. Due to the nature of the Western industry and how long it takes to make games, as Kern highlighted in Side Scrollers on March 23, it may take about three to four years before the effects could truly be felt, at least in the AAA scene. Even as layoffs continue, and the investor funds helping justify questionable ideas continue to peter out, titles that have already gotten such “support” are still being worked on. Maybe the activists, culture warriors, and their allies in the media and elsewhere may yet snatch some measure of “victory” for themselves, at the expense of the very individuals, minorities and common hobby being fought over.
By that same token, it’s too soon to let cynicism or rage take hold. Cold comfort as it might be for gamers and developers alike, it’s growing clearer by the day that they are more representative of gaming’s true diversity than the ones silencing and smearing them ever could. More than shining a light as a disinfectant, here is a chance to transcend tired paradigms and being at the mercy of opportunistic ideologues. Something that, perhaps from this writer’s vantage point, could be worth sticking around for.
To paraphrase an old meme, people just want to play and make video games. Nothing more, nothing less. If that counts as conspiratorial, I’m not sure what else is.