Narrative consultancy group Sweet Baby Inc. has become the target of an online harassment campaign for its consulting work on games like Alan Wake 2, Marvel's Spider-Man 2 and Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League.
Why? The answer is frustratingly hard to put down into words. Users on websites like Twitter and Kiwi Farms (a site known for organizing sometimes violent harassment campaigns) operating under the name "Sweet Baby Inc. Detected" have singled out the agency for allegedly having overarching influence on these games, and accused it of forcibly injecting a "political agenda" into them by advocating for diversity.
While the studio's contributions happen mostly on a microlevel (contributing story feedback, helping workshop narrative beats, and writing flavor text and barks with the lens of inclusivity in mind) their work has been reframed as shoehorning Black or LGBTQ characters into games for which they were not originally designed—sometimes through intimidation. It's a grim conspiracy theory built on out-of-context comments and a deliberate misreading of their mission statement, as well as racism, homophobia, and other layers of bigotry.
In an interview with Game Developer Sweet Baby Inc. CEO Kim Belair said the harassment they've been experiencing started bubbling in October 2023, around the release of Marvel's Spider-Man 2 and Alan Wake 2. In the last few weeks however, the harassment grew stronger after the groups spun up a Steam Curation Page and Discord server to organize and spread their conspiracy theories.
Despite that increased spike, Valve and Discord have allowed the Curation Page and server to remain online. Posts from the groups' moderators indicate the companies have warned them that content on their platforms may result in their being removed, forcing them to take some additional moderation steps, but still leaving them online.
Why? Both platforms have made it clear they don't want to be used as vectors for harassment. But slippery language in their terms of service has enabled bad actors to turn their platforms from ones where developers do business to ones where developers can be targeted for abuse.
That hole needs to be closed—fast.
Read the full article at Game Developer.
