Sweet Baby Inc., a small-to-medium video game business, has come under fire from conspiracy trolls

“Disgusting company” “a bunch of woke degenerates”, “Video Game Gravediggers”. For several weeks now, many conservative gamers have been harassing Sweet Baby Inc. employees online. (SBI), which specializes in editorial consulting for video game script writing. The alleged crime of this company with only fifteen employees? Manipulate the video game industry to make it more woke.

The conspiracy offensive begins in the fall of 2023, when Spider-Man Marvel 2, the highly anticipated new Spider-Man adventure on PS5. Very quickly, some players noted the presence of LGBT flag graffiti on one of the game’s buildings and the choice of an African-American Spider-Man. On some conservative forums, mostly in America, Internet users are convinced they are seeing evidence of an awakened conspiracy. In their opinion, there are more and more minority characters, white male heroes are less and less powerful, and the silhouettes of heroines are less and less sexy… and they need to quickly find someone to blame.

A week after the game’s release, an Internet user shared his discovery on the very controversial Kiwi Farms forum, which has become the initiator of numerous harassment campaigns: Insomniac Games, the studio behind the game, shared its discovery. Spider-Man Marvel, reportedly asked a consultant to help him write the script. Its name: Sweet Baby Inc., a small Montreal-based editorial consulting company investing in issues of diversity and inclusion.

Phantom evidence

Since its creation in 2018 by screenwriters Kim Belair and David Bédard, it has collaborated with several industry players and has been featured in the credits of major productions (Assassin’s Creed, Alan Wake II…) as more independent games. In other words, it is a subcontractor. But this Internet user is convinced: this is an awakened cancer affecting video games. Sweet Baby Inc., however, is just one of many editorial consulting companies that have played a little-known but important role in the sector for several years.

Gregorios Kythreotis, co-creator of the award-winning game. Sand, testifies to this. “The release date of our game was approaching and we were shocked, he explains. A script was written but not integrated into the form of dialogue. SBI took care of this with professionalism and respect for our artistic approach. » However, using ghostly evidence, the company’s detractors assure us that it would have used this to introduce non-binary pronouns.

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