Steam, lemmy and reddit are currently creaming themselves over a game which devs makes multiple really cringe "jokes" about slavery and exploitation. Read the steam page descriptions.
Those "pals" are clearly antropomorphised creatures being dogwhistle for humans. And if you read the game reviews, even the g*mers are not lost on that fact (just they love that):
Sounds like g*mers felt ruffled by their new favourite game having both shit devs and fellow players. Both lemmygrad and hexbear usually fall like ton of bricks on a games and other products with devs and communities much less reactionary and here i see this low effort defenses.
Something's up that's for sure.