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Sweet Baby Inc. employees harass steam group admin for listing their games to avoid them
(boundingintocomics.com)
this post was submitted on 04 Mar 2024
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So sweet baby Inc (who I never knew of until now) felt attacked by a list on steam which collected titles they worked on (it didn't say avoid apparently, just a list of titles they worked on with proof from their own media).
Kind of telling of the company that they saw this as an offense to them rather than as a tribute. If they thought their work was good they'd advertise this list themselves.
Also, way to dig a grave.
The aspect that's getting lost in all this is that the curator has basically put up a hit list of games for people to review bomb just for associating with a company. The curator has no evidence on the level of involvement SBI had with the game but they don't recommend the game based on them being involved at all.
They have taken something small and weaponised it so now it's harming game devs. No one has any evidence on how SBI were involved with any of the games they've listed on their website beyond vague mentions of "narrative" or "character development".
The worst part is, I'm not even surprised by this.
It quite literally says "Not Recommended" for each of them.
I'm not sure how you interpret that as anything other than "avoid".
It has a "do not recommend" next to each game on the list, and it's used for people to review bomb games and cry about this company on the Steam forums.
Where did you hear about this review bombing?
If you read the list itself and the discussions about it, it's clearly a call for harassment (the list, that is), not just a simple listing.
Just like the consulting company’s employees called for harassment of the list’s creator.
Well it was essentially a boycott. If people will stop buying games made by them, then publishers will stop hiring them and the company will go bankrupt. So I can understand the motivation for it.
Now, I think the whole scandal is really manufactured. The company goal is basically to provide contractor writers to help with game development. They try to differentiate themselves by claiming that they write content that is inclusive, which can help make games for a wider populace.
The hate though is misdirected. People are claiming that the games are bad, because the company made them bad, when in reality if publisher prefers to hire contractor writers rather than hire their own, they likely don't care about quality and just want to milk the franchise.
I actually had no idea bout this scandal until yesterday, when it was talked by a streamer while playing Cyberpunk 2077. The guy complained how other games are ruined by SweetBaby. What is golden for me is that he said he loves Cyberpunk 2077, that it's very fun game, but in the game you have straight, gay, bi, trans NPC characters. You can even be gay, bi, trans yourself.
The game has loser men, and powerful women (I mean the NUSA president is a women) similarly, you have black characters that are very powerful and honorable, you have a powerful Asian woman in DLC that has skills that you can't surpass. I mean the game is the wokest of woke, yet still "it is fun" for him.
To me it was perfect example that it is all bullshit, and really what makes game great is the effort put in not whether it is woke/anti-woke.
If only the devs had put effort into making driving not suck, it would be an amazing game.
Notably, Cyberpunk 2077 is not to my knowledge a game Sweet Baby was involved with. So clearly it's not simply anger at non-straight characters existing in games.
I know more people who are angry that a character in a repeated murder mystery visual novel game isn't actually trans like they want him to be than I know people who are angry that characters in games are occasionally trans. Or people upset about Kaine from Nier Gestalt/Replicant in general.
More importantly, the moment someone uses the word "woke" in such a context you already know that:
Collecting lists related to a disenfranchised group or the aid of a disenfranchised group is a pretty big red flag of the actor's intentions, especially when that list gets passed around to corners of the internet that are well known to think the problem is not enough disenfranchisement.
4chan lost the right to complain about anything related to D&I in gaming and be treated as anything but subhuman slime after Gamergate.
So this consulting company is now a “disenfranchised group”?
Didn't know a consulting company was a disenfranchised group.
Amusingly, one of the people Quinn cheated on Gjoni with works for Sweet Baby, just to tie things together. The one that was involved in doxxing and trying to DDoS that crowdfunded game jam project thing that the Vivian James character was created for.
https://youtu.be/rd7psPWK3Ew?si=QgooDvsuUFCHAi11
This article:
Wikipedia:
What’s it called when you blame a victim again?
This article is garbage, and anyone who gives a fuck about this is a simply a moron wasting their life. You’d have to be implausibly stupid to believe that a 15-employee “PC” consulting firm is the root of all evil in the video games industry, yet here they are.
The thing I find most interesting about the Zoe Post is that the response would have been **radically **different had it been a woman making similar allegations against a man. That Quinn herself made much less detailed allegations against another man 5 years later that led to his career imploding the next day and his suicide 4 days later and she's seen as being in the right for it I think demonstrates that notion pretty well.
The "article" is very clearly just a call to forther hate on SGI. It's crazy to what lengths people go to justify their bad purchases, desperately clinging to whatever explanation they can cook up for why there is no self-blame to apply for having bought into the shit that is Suicide Squad. No no, you see, the game would have been awesome if not for that WOKE consulting company! If not for them this would have been a 10/10, I could not have known it'd be bad!
It originally did, but once someone ran an article on it, people adviced the admin that his current reviews might afoul of steam policies, so they went back and revised all the reviews be neutral statements that SBI was involved, linking a source for each.
However, all the ratings on this curator are negative non-recommends, with SBI involvement as the stated reason. So it's hard to paint it as just a neutral list.
That said, there's nothing inherently wrong with that. If you want to avoid a company's games, that should be allowed.
It still remains in the curator's logo.
Does it? The only logo I see is the SBI logo combined with a Metal Gear Solid !
Ah, they've changed it. Yes, I see same as you.
This was also reported on during the weekend, and when I looked into it then they had the Sweet Baby Inc logo with a big "forbidden" slashed red circle over it.
I don't see the problem.
But I do like the new logo. Because it looks cool.
That's fine. I was providing context for the otherwise confusing claim that the curator was de-recommending games.
Is it confusing? You can go to their page right now and every single game on the list is listed as "Not recommended".
I think it's clear, but discussion here and other places indicate it's not immediately clear.
Well... 4chan is using it as a list of games to avoid. Cant blame them, they've all been stinkers.
I want to add that I'm not against inclusivity. But I am against crappy games.
At least try and form your own opinions, maybe?
Of the 16 games on the list, 6 of them haven't even released yet, and the average Steam user rating of those remaining is 78%.
Only two are below "Mostly Positive", which are Gotham Knights and Dungeons and Dragons: Dark Alliance, both being "Mixed".
To be more concrete, we have to see if nearly all of the released games on the list have been subject to "abnormal review activity", which steam automatically excludes from the percentage
God of War Ragnarok and Spiderman 2 are stinkers? This article is entirely whiny gamergate nonsense.
Those 2 games aren't on the list... They're not sold on steam. The context of the above message is surely based on the steam curator list. I'm not sure any of the 16 games on this list are worthwhile at all. The only one I've heard of was Suicide Squad kill the justice league... and I think we call all agree that game is definitely on the "stinker" list.
Edit: Oh and Gotham Knights, I think I saw that at some point too... That definitely didn't get anything near "good" reviews.
And to pre-empt it... I didn't actually know at all about AC:valhalla, seems it got okay reviews... But just never landed on my radar.
Fair enough, although these games will presumably end up on the list once they are launched on steam. I still stand behind my view that this article and the list itself are complete nonsense
Stinkers? All of these are pretty popular titles...
Well, not Suicide Squad, but they've got plenty of bangers on their resume.
Lmao, taking pointers from 4chan
Not saying I agree with them
Eh, I imagine /v/ probably has at least not completely insane opinions about video games.