Sweet Baby Inc. Continues to Throw Their Bottle Out of the Pram

With other gaming news taking up positions of prominence more recently in the mainstream media, and the previous debacle surrounding Sweet Baby Inc. seemingly dying down, you may have been lulled into a false belief that the drama surrounding DEI in the industry was all but over. But the truth of the matter is this uneasy tension never quite went away and has once again reared its ugly head, as Sweet Baby Inc. have gone on the offensive recently, with the CEO blasting both gamers and Youtubers for launching a “hate campaign” against them. In this blog entry, I’ll take a look at how justified those claims are, how prevalent the backlash against DEI still is, and what actions companies such as Sweet Baby Inc. are taking to combat this pushback against their company’s core principles.

On August 2024, the CEO of Sweet Baby Inc., Kim Belair, gave a talk entitled “What Happens When You Get Harassed,” where she positioned herself as a completely innocent victim. Claiming she had faced a “hate campaign” that had lasted over a year, Kim argued that the attacks on herself and Sweet Baby Inc. had been completely unjustified. That gamers and Youtubers who had pushed back on her previous comments and the company’s track record, had unfairly gone out of their way to make her and her company the enemy. She further claimed that staff members had felt their voices had been silenced, feeling hounded off of social media.

Not Adding Up

There are several flaws with this narrative. Firstly, the idea that those who respond to social media posts are somehow harassing you if they disagree with your stance is ludicrous. Platforms such as X (formerly known as Twitter) act as a town square, where ideas and thoughts can be shared. But, as with a town square, while they can be shared, others are equally as free to share their responses to your takes. If the responses to the tweets put out by members of Sweet Baby Inc. had been positive, it’s doubtful there would have been any complaints from them. But because the vast majority disagreed with their stances, they chose to interpret this as harassment, feeling entitled to only positive feedback.

Secondly, regarding the notion that Youtubers were somehow actively launching a targeted attack at the company, this is simply untrue. While it is true that many videos were made from various gaming and geek culture oriented channels over the past few months on the company, the majority of these coincide with the previous drama. Drama, that I’ll remind you Sweet Baby Inc. themselves were largely the cause of. It makes no business sense for Youtubers to cover topics which aren’t already trending, and Sweet Baby Inc.’s thirst for attention is the driving force behind their continual coverage. Had Sweet Baby Inc.’s CEO chosen not to make the comments they did, criticizing channels that were covering their original hot takes, then they wouldn’t be facing further scrutiny from these same Youtubers now. You can’t sling mud, then not expect to face any retort.

Thirdly, as alluded to above, Kim neglects to mention all of the inflammatory tweets that staff members, including herself have made over this year long period. As representatives of her company, this has resulted in negative PR. But no personal responsibility was ever taken for this. Nor does she acknowledge the fact that in her own previous presentations about her company, she admitted using tactics of fear, intimidation, and the threat of cancellation to secure employment with larger studios. This directly goes against the narrative of Sweet Baby Inc. being a proponent of preventing voices from being silenced, as they have actively attempted to silence others whenever it was convenient for them.

Learn From Their Mistakes

There’s an important lesson to learn here for games developers. If you find yourself on the bad end of negative press, the worst thing you can do is play the victim and hurl insults at those covering your story. PR statements exist for a reason. They offer a way of responding, acknowledging the perceived issues, and calming things down through de-escalatory language.

Time for DEI to DIE

While DEI advocates such as Sweet Baby Inc. have become all too common in the industry, recent trends suggests that gamers are pushing back hard on such initiatives. A recent poll by gaming site NeoGAF for example found that out of 751 gamers polled, 94.9% of gamers voted against the implementation of DEI in their beloved franchises. Similar polls conducted on X (formerly known as Twitter), discovered that out of 10,000 polled individuals, a humungous 97.4% declared DEI non-important to their gaming experience.

And it seems like those in charge are starting to take notice. Thomas Mahler, Moon Studios’ CEO and Director of the hit indie game Ori, for example, would most certainly agree with these sentiments. As when asked a question about DEI possibly making its way into his series, he responded as follows: “Absolutely not. I find that entire approach perverted. I’m an artist, I would rather quit than have someone else tell me how we should do our art.”

Sweet Baby Inc. Can’t Hide From the Truth

In an act of blatant self-preservation against the increasingly hostile backlash from gamers that was forming against DEI, on October 10^th, 2024 Sweet Baby Inc. removed their clients list from their website. While the official position on this has been that Sweet Baby Inc. were seeking to protect their clientele from unsolicited feedback and harassment from toxic members of the gaming community, many gamers feel this is a thinly veiled attempt to prevent potential employers from seeing a pattern. A pattern that shows that the majority of the projects they’ve been associated with have been undeniable commercial flops.

That being said, it is undeniably the case that some individuals may very well take things too far, and death threats and other such criminal acts are unfortunately all too common in today’s modern world of internet anonymity. Therefore, even as a precautionary measure, it may well indeed be the case that Sweet Baby Inc.’s decision to remove their client list from their website is ultimately an understandable decision, that may well hold some merit.