Chances are you’ve at least heard the name Sweet Baby Inc over the last few days, primarily because a lot of people are very angry about it on social media.
It can be difficult to parse what’s going on by glancing at out-of-context X/Twitter posts, so let’s cut right to the heart of it and run down what the latest internet drama is about.
What is Sweet Baby Inc?
First things first, what even is Sweet Baby Inc, and what does it have to do with video games? Founded in 2018, it’s a narrative consultation studio that works alongside game developers to “tell better, more empathetic stories while diversifying and enriching the video games industry.” You can find its website here and while the name may not ring any bells, you will definitely be familiar with some of the games it has worked on. These include big names such as Alan Wake 2, Insomniac’s Spider-Man 2, and Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League.
Essentially, Sweet Baby Inc’s job is to look over scripts and stories for games and work with the development team, particularly in regards to diversity and representation. Its role varies from game to game; so, for example, its website says it assisted with “Narrative and Character Consultation, with a focus on representation” for God of War Ragnarök, whereas it had a hand in scriptwriting for cutscenes, audio logs, and the like for Suicide Squad.
The company’s focus on diversity and inclusiveness in video games attracted complaints and criticisms from self-described “anti-woke” gamers. But Sweet Baby Inc gained notoriety thanks to something called Sweet Baby Inc detected.
What is Sweet Baby Inc detected?
If you’re on Steam and are part of a Community group, you can be made a Steam Curator, allowing you to put together lists of games available on the platform to recommend to other people. “Sweet Baby Inc detected” is the name of one such group, and it has put together its own curated list of Steam games that Sweet Baby Inc has worked on for the express purpose of telling people to avoid playing them, purely because of Sweet Baby Inc’s involvement.
On Feb. 29, one of Sweet Baby Inc’s employees drew attention to the group on X. They asked their followers to report it and its creator due to it failing Steam’s code of conduct, which states shared spaces on the platform must be respectful. This only seemed to raise the group’s profile, though, and drew more peoples’ attention toward Sweet Baby Inc, resulting in numerous videos (including this one by Asmongold) citing the company as responsible for “ruining” so many video games. At the time of writing, the official Sweet Baby Inc account has made its posts protected, suggesting the company and its employees have since seen a significant increase in negative feedback and comments.
There’s also been a subsequent backlash to the backlash, with people pointing out how Sweet Baby Inc is only a consultant on these projects. This group’s argument notes that if a game studio decided it didn’t like any of Sweet Baby Inc’s suggestions to include more diversity, it could have ignored them.
