Surgent Studios, the developer behind Tales of Kenzera: ZAU, just announced that its entire games division is going on hiatus. The indie studio, founded by Abubakar Salim, is linked to Sweet Baby Inc’s infamous duo, Kim Belair and David Bedard.
Last time we talked about Tales of Kenzera: ZAU was back in July, when Surgent Studios laid off a bunch of employees just months after their one and only release. Their obscure title, published by EA, got almost zero marketing.
But gamers couldn’t help but notice the real story, the connection between Salim and Sweet Baby Inc’s founders, as they had previously teamed up to create a company called ‘Bebe Sucre LTD.’
Given the notorious reputation Sweet Baby Inc has earned in just over a year, being directly responsible for forcing woke propaganda and political messaging into video games under the guise of ‘consultation’ for authentic racial representation it’s no surprise that Tales of Kenzera: ZAU flew under the radar.
Developers have outsourced their diversity quotas to firms like Sweet Baby Inc, specifically to appease the developers themselves and corporate giants like BlackRock with their ESG and DEI mandates.
The game, an unremarkable side-scroller featuring a less-than-attractive Black shaman protagonist, was released by Surgent Studios, which somehow managed to secure EA as a publisher. EA, true to form, did zero marketing for the game, likely reflecting their real aspirations for Tales of Kenzera: ZAU, minimal.
Surgent Studios likely had a higher budget than they should have for what turned out to be a basic Metroidvania-style game and took the best deal they could get.
And, as expected, Sweet Baby Inc’s fingerprints were all over this. Known for being involved in some of the biggest commercial flops of recent times, their obsession with pushing political messaging, diversity for diversity’s sake, and race-swapping characters didn’t win any hearts.
Consumers weren’t exactly thrilled when they learned of Surgent Studios’ ties with Sweet Baby Inc’s founders, Kim Belair and David Bedard.
When the game finally launched, it was pretty much ignored. EA’s refusal to put any marketing muscle behind it meant the only people who even heard about it were those who knew of Abubakar Salim’s connections to Sweet Baby Inc, and they weren’t buying.
The game bombed. Hard. We’re talking a peak of 287 concurrent players on PC. For context, that’s still more than Bandai Namco’s Unknown 9: Awakening, which had a much larger budget and was meant to propel a multimedia franchise.
In the end, with a small team, a smaller budget, and a big stench of Sweet Baby Inc’s influence, Tales of Kenzera: ZAU became a commercial disaster, even by indie standards.
Instead of taking the backlash on the chin and trying to improve for next time, Abubakar Salim quickly took to social media after Tales of Kenzera: ZAU’s release to vent his frustrations.
Rather than acknowledge the game’s obscurity, mediocrity, or lack of marketing, Salim tried to capitalize on its infamy as another victim of Sweet Baby Inc. He pulled an Anita Sarkeesian, blaming the game’s failure on a racially motivated harassment campaign, playing the race card since he’s Black, of course.
According to Salim, his small-scale indie title flopped not because of any inherent flaws, but because of racism.
This attempt to gaslight the gaming community, framing any criticism of the game as ‘harassment,’ fell flat. The reality was simple: Tales of Kenzera: ZAU was a game few people even wanted to play, and the only reason anyone knew about it was due to its association with the widely disliked Sweet Baby Inc.
Despite Salim’s claims that the game was ‘selling just fine,’ the facts tell a different story. Just a couple of months later, Surgent Studios underwent layoffs, and now it’s essentially dead, punctuated by their desperate ‘Help us bring our vision to life’ announcement.
With a generic corporate message it was announced that Surgent Studios is going ‘on hiatus’ as they aim to secure funding for their next project. Coincidentally, the employees of this small indie outfit were also put on notice for redundancy.
For a game that was supposedly “selling well” enough for the PC demographic publicly viewable on SteamDB to be considered a fraction this comes as a massive surprise.
The message continues with the usual corporate spiel: ‘Everyone at Surgent worked incredibly hard to create Tales of Kenzera: ZAU, a game that truly comes from the heart. Their passion, creativity, and dedication are nothing short of extraordinary.’
Unfortunately, as we’ve seen time and again with other releases tied to diversity initiatives, especially those involving Sweet Baby Inc, things didn’t go as planned.
As it turns out pandering to a niche audience obsessed with race and ideology, who ironically don’t even tend to buy games, wasn’t exactly the brightest business move.
Fortunately, Surgent Studios has promised more updates for Tales of Kenzera: ZAU down the line, so I guess there’s that. But it really makes you wonder just how much of the game’s budget got funneled into Sweet Baby Inc’s ‘consulting fees.’
I’m sure studio founder Abubakar Salim was more than happy to funnel EA’s money to his friends and former colleagues. It reeks of embellishment, a classic conflict of interest, hiring your narrative consultancy pals to ‘help’ with your so-called passion project.
Now, thanks to its colossal commercial failure, the studio’s on life support, practically begging for a new patron to leech from which, let’s be honest, they probably won’t get, nor do they deserve to.
