Amidst the turmoil surrounding Sweet Baby Inc’s PR debacle following a failed harassment campaign, the United States Government has revealed its vested interest in safeguarding Sweet Baby Inc’s DEI / ESG consultancy.
The Department of Homeland Security have personally funded a non-profit organization to obscure the truth and defend Sweet Baby Inc’s crumbling reputation by urging the gaming industry to “denounce” Gamergate.
It’s as absurd as one would suggest: “Take This,” a non-profit organization focused on mental health in video games, has received support from the Department of Homeland Security to rally video game players and the industry as a whole to condemn the horrors of Gamergate as we’re quickly being ushered into a sequel.
The alleged mental health organization is anything but minor in the industry, boasting several notable figures among its governing board members and officers. Included in this group are Pete Hines, Vice President of Marketing at Bethesda, Raashi Sikka, Vice President of Global Diversity & Inclusion at Ubisoft; and Christian Svensson, Head of Global Portfolio and Acquisitions at PlayStation.
Regarding its connections to the United States government, according to a public disclaimer on their various whitepapers addressing extremism in video games, their efforts are funded as part of an official Department of Homeland Security research project called ‘Disrupting Video Games-Based Radicalization Through Collaborative Cross-Sector Networks’ (DHS # EMW-2022-GR-00036).
What started out as a harassment campaign launched by Sweet Baby Inc employee, Chris Kindred, who directed their 18,000+ Twitter followers into filing false reports targeted a lone Latin American who created a Steam curator group that merely lists the various games featured on Valve’s Steam storefront that have been made in collaboration with the nefarious DEI / ESG anti-White racists at Sweet Baby Inc quickly turned sour.
Avid fans of gaming were previously made aware of Sweet Baby’s existence months prior, the diversity consultation outfit having worked on numerous high profile woke spectacles despite being founded in 2018, their works to this date include Marvel’s Spider-Man 2, a game which we’ve detailed previously, Alan Wake 2 which features race-swapping and God of War Ragnarok.
The aftermath of Chris’ harassment campaign has been nothing short of remarkable. The general public is now cautious of Sweet Baby Inc, which appears unusually defensive and offended by someone simply compiling a list of games they’ve contributed to. This list aims to raise consumer awareness about a company solely dedicated to promoting inclusive agendas and narratives in the video game industry.
Similar to the original Gamergate saga a decade ago, media game journalists appear to have an incestuous relationship with activists and Marxist developers. Major media outlets have joined forces to churn out article after article defending Sweet Baby Inc’s reputation.
They do so by blatantly deceiving their audiences, gaslighting about their involvement in the gaming industry, and portraying Sweet Baby Inc as victims of an alt-right conspiracy theory.
Their narratives conveniently omits the details of their attempt to shut down a Steam curation group.
Because journalists are to be trusted, the hundred of thousands of gamers who’ve witness a genuine harassment campaign launched by Sweet Baby Inc employees in real time are all wrong.
Daily discoveries of new details about Sweet Baby Inc employees, such as co-founder Kim Belair’s admission during a GDC presentation that she used fear tactics to push certain changes into projects? They mean nothing. Despite the emergence of old tweets by Sweet Baby Inc employees featuring racist remarks towards White people, Jews, and others, journalists who were exposed a decade ago for colluding with certain feminist individuals to push specific agendas assert their righteousness over any criticism.
They assert their correctness, branding anyone who dissents as an alt-right conspiracy theorist. This perspective is typified by figures like Alyssa Mercante, who defended Sweet Baby Inc in a Kotaku article while simultaneously asserting that it’s impossible to be racist towards White people.
The latest outlet rushing to defend Sweet Baby Inc is the non-profit organization Take This, which published a blog post titled: Responding to GamerGate 2.
Take This have described GamerGate 2 as a targeted harassment campaign launched towards Sweet Baby Inc specifically, which is hyperlinked to their pals and allies at Kotaku. The organization proclaims that the targeted harassment has impacted those associated with Sweet Baby Inc including journalists who’ve loosely “covered” the story, omitting vital details for the sole purpose of painting their progressive allies as the victim.
In their efforts to offer guidance, the Take This declared:
“Discord, Steam, and X have been the predominant platforms where the abuse and harassment has been taking place.”
“In these spaces, lists of game studios, companies, and associated organizations are being circulated for targeting by members of the mob,” they histrionically informed their readers. “Large-scale harassment campaigns like this fuel – and are fueled by – political events. As political rhetoric heats up ahead of the US presidential election later this year, this kind of online activity is going to ramp up and it’s important to understand that these phenomena are interrelated.”
To address this, Take This proceeded to offer industry advice on “things we can do to mitigate the harm” caused by the alleged harassment campaign. Regarding individual action, the organization suggested, “It’s extremely important to speak out and step up for folks who are being harmed. This kind of support can take on many different forms. This could be an email or quick check-in with the people in your orbit who are targets of the harassment, or are close to those targets (family members, colleagues, and friends of those targeted also experience different types of harm in these situations).”
Addressing “industry leaders,” Take This cautioned, “You may be inclined to remain quiet or cautious, but that’s actually not helpful.”
They argued, “At the time, many studios were hesitant to address the hate and abuse from Gamergate in any meaningful way. The reasons varied, but usually this hesitation was born out of fear of losing profits or concern that taking a stance would attract the attention of the Gamergate mob.”
What actually would attract the so-called “gamergate mob” would be all of these mass media reports that omit facts, smear consumers as vile racists or bigots, and praise a little-known diversity consultation corporation that totally doesn’t collaborate with compromised game developers to promote certain anti-establishment narratives in their games.
Calling me a fucking “conspiracy theorist” because I understand the concept of pattern recognition.
Take This then advocates that the gaming industry failed to properly address the wider audience by openly denouncing Gamergate a decade ago, which has apparently allowed “hate and abuse to flourish” while being “spread and normalized.”
Concluding their warning, Take This firmly stated, “Hate, harassment, and toxic behavior have no place in games. By taking direct, targeted action in a timely manner, we can mitigate further harm to talented, dedicated folks in games, and help prevent additional recurrences of these harmful events.”
Despite the prevailing popular narrative framing the backlash against Sweet Baby Inc. as a “large-scale harassment campaign,” this characterization couldn’t be further from the truth.
As mentioned above, the so-called “harassment” directed at them consists entirely of a Steam Curator list that was created to track their publicly credited works, by using their own website as a reference, the Steam group which has over 269,000 members.
The group also has a public Discord server of whom a Kotaku journalist proclaimed she “infiltrated” and attempted to gather real life names and identities of its inhabitants, obviously for no nefarious reasons such as to dox certain individuals in the hopes that their employment is terminated.
That would be preposterous.
The sole individual to have advocated for harassment against an individual or entity was Sweet Baby Inc’s own Chris Kindred. In response to the creation of the Steam Curator List, Kindred urged his followers and supporters to attempt to shut down both the list and its creator’s Steam account through a mass false reporting campaign, specifically mentioning to target their Steam account because he “clearly likes his account so much.”
Instead of focusing on protecting their own country’s borders, the Department of Homeland Security allocated $700 million into researching “extremism” in video games back in 2022. Now, they are evidently supporting an initiative for the gaming industry to denounce Gamergate.
Similarly, many gaming corporations extensively advocate for various political matters unrelated to their industry, such as the Roe vs. Wade controversy about abortion rights and the domestic terrorist organization known as Black Lives Matter.
To provide context as to who we’re dealing with currently, here is a video of Alejandro Mayorkas, the current Secretary of Homeland Security, being questioned about his open border policies for the United States.
Instead of directly addressing claims that he is promoting White genocide through mass immigration, Mayorkas chooses to play the victim card by referencing the Holocaust and stating that he is the son of a survivor.
I simply cannot comprehend how bringing up one’s heritage and references to the Holocaust is in any way a valid defense against criticism for failing to protect one’s home nation which currently has an ongoing border crisis.
But then again, this is pretty much what they do, when confronted with criticism, facts and logic they simply change the narrative and play the victim, from Alejandro Mayorkas to Sweet Baby Inc to the countless media outlets that have defended their tarnished name, they are all the goddamn same.
To the uninformed majority, they’ve been manipulated into believing that Gamergate was a mob targeting women and minorities in the video game industry. While I’ve covered this extensively before, it’s important to reiterate to emphasize the truth of the matter.
Gamergate stemmed from avid gaming enthusiasts regarding ethics in gaming journalism, for many gamers, the situation of bias in the media had been steadily worsening, as game studios released increasingly lackluster products that still received widespread acclaim from prominent critics and journalists.
Among dedicated gamers, it had become widely known that there was a notable amount of nepotism, favoritism, and what could be metaphorically described as ‘incest’ within the industry. This trend was particularly noticeable around the years 2012-2014, which is when Gamergate gained momentum.
During this period, there was a growing concern regarding issues like preserving a “free internet.” Conversations centered around initiatives such as SOPA and PIPA, among other related topics that emerged.
People became actively engaged in these campaigns, and it seemed to be a bipartisan concern among the majority of the youth. As a result, there was strong opposition to such bills, with SOPA and PIPA being among the primary targets. Following perceived successes in these efforts, the general belief among the average person was that they could influence the outcome of larger-scale situations, whether involving the government or not.
During this time, gamers’ overall confidence in most game news outlets was notably low. Individuals from various political spectrums expressed dissatisfaction with nearly all publications, suspecting that developers were influencing positive coverage and reviews either directly or indirectly through financial means.
It was also during this period that prominent figures like Anita Sarkeesian emerged at the forefront of gaming discussions.
Anita Sarkeesian quickly gained traction with mainstream media outlets and certain gaming journalism platforms, becoming a prominent figure in their coverage. While gaming outlets increasingly featured her, many attributed this trend primarily to compromised platforms like Polygon and Kotaku, rather than viewing it as a widespread issue across all other publications.
Then in 2013-2014, Zoe Quinn (also known as Zoë Tiberius Quinn or Chelsea van Valkenburg) suddenly rose to prominence. She was another prominent feminist figurehead and received widespread acclaim for her supposed “game” called Depression Quest.
In the “game,” players were presented with scenarios such as “You’re feeling down about yourself and don’t feel confident in leaving the home. What do you do?” If you chose an answer that the developer, Zoe/Chelsea, disagreed with, you would be told, “That didn’t work. You’re depressed,” prompting you to select another option.
It was essentially an extremely simplistic effort, bordering on what could barely qualify as a web-based multiple-choice questionnaire, yet it was presented to reviewers as a legitimate game. Needless to say, it was dogshit.
The main trigger for Gamergate arose from the discrepancy between Zoe Quinn’s game not receiving traditional “scores” and the widespread acclaim it received from many outlets.
Initial articles highlighted the alleged challenges encountered by female developers in the gaming industry, citing discrimination without offering concrete examples to substantiate these claims.
Subsequently, the same outlets seemed to have prepared follow-up articles discussing how both Zoe Quinn and Anita Sarkeesian had purportedly faced continuous harassment and attacks from online trolls and sexist misogynists. They escalated their criticism of gamers as a whole, associating anyone who didn’t support Zoe and Anita’s works with these trolls and individuals purportedly harboring hatred towards women.
Then, a significant revelation came to light. Zoe’s (Chelsea’s) ex-boyfriend published a lengthy blog post detailing his experiences dating her. In this expose, he disclosed a significant amount of personal information, with the most noteworthy revelation being that she had been involved with five other individuals simultaneously.
Notably, three of these individuals were confirmed to be game journalists, including Nathan Grayson, who worked at Rock Paper Shotgun, Kotaku, and now writes for Aftermath.
The other individuals involved were Robin Arnott, a judge for Indiecade at the time, Kyle Pulver, another indie developer, Brandon McCartin, and Joshua Boggs. The situation was humorously dubbed “5 Guys, Burgers and Fries” by Mister Metokur.
Alongside this expose, numerous revelations emerged, but perhaps none were as significant as the newfound awareness of the incestuous nature of the game industry. Concrete evidence emerged indicating that at least this particular “game developer” had engaged in relationships with reviewers, resulting in undeserved positive coverage.
This revelation served as a catalyst, prompting a flood of additional examples highlighting the industry’s questionable practices in the years that followed. However, before the industry’s misgivings came to light, there was another significant event known as the “Gamers Are Dead” situation.
After the revelations about Zoe, the industry swiftly responded with a coordinated denouncement. Almost every major and many minor publications simultaneously published articles declaring that “Gamers” should no longer be the target audience for game developers.
More than 20 outlets released similar articles, using identical or nearly identical language to criticize gamers, labeling them as racist, sexist, and misogynistic. This further exposed the collusion between media and developers for positive coverage or the pushing of certain agendas in the industry.
Their purported agenda, centered on combating “sexism” in gaming, included assertions such as “gaming was dead,” among other claims. The revelation of Zoe Quinn’s actions was the final straw for many gamers, signaling that mainstream media outlets were merely a group of corrupt entities focused on promoting a specific narrative, confirming that there was an incestrous relationship between journalists and woke activists, working together to destroy the industry from within.
This was the final straw that led to a clear division between gamers and game developers.
The problems became more apparent after the next revelation, where Billy (William Usher) from One Angry Gamer came into play. He had gained recognition previously for his in-depth coverage and research into various scandals in the game industry. However, the major event that catapulted him into the spotlight was the revelation of “GameJournoPros.”
GJP was a Google Group comprising nearly all of the top writers and reviewers for various gaming outlets. Until Billy exposed the existence of this group in late 2014, they had functioned like a figurative control group. They determined who would receive positive coverage, negative coverage, or complete media blackouts, and pressured each member to participate in the same general manner.
There were prominent figures like Kyle Orland, the group’s founder, who held more influence than others. Many well-known writers were part of this group.
Billy reached out to Milo Yiannopolis, who was also gaining prominence at the time as Breitbart’s upcoming tech editor. This revelation further confirmed the excessive influence that game journalists and reviewers held, which the average gamer found unacceptable. Thus, years of backlash ensued.
This coincided with the rise of various other movements at the time, including Donald Trump’s announcement of his presidential candidacy in 2015. The term “GamerGate” itself was coined by Adam Baldwin, who took notice of the events unfolding and seemed to admire Internet Aristocrat aka Mister Metokur.
However, the GamerGate movement was unfortunately too divided to be effective.
The entities leaning too far left made arguments towards moderate or even blatantly pointless ideas and beliefs that weren’t far from maintaining the status quo. This included figures like Mundane Matt, Thunderf00t, and ShoeOnHead. There were also many “moderates,” such as SargonOfAkkad and Jeremy Hambley (The Quartering), who presented more reasonable arguments, but they weren’t seen as long-term solutions to the problems.
On the other end of the spectrum, there were “farther right” entities like Internet Aristocrat (Jim) who had their own ideas but lacked the drive to implement them. Despite not being the one to break the news, Jim was regarded as the de facto “head” or “leader” of GamerGate due to his effective communication of the contents and his distinct approach compared to other content creators discussing the events. However, Jim rejected the role of “leader,” contributing to the movement’s downfall.
Additionally, the presence of grifters, who were not much different from Anita and Zoe in terms of complaining about harassment and e-begging (such as Mundane Matt and The Quartering), further led the movement down a path of destruction.
And thus, the fate of GamerGate was sealed. However, over the years, the name continued to be invoked by gaming outlets to assert their dominance over consumers. Sparse outlets like OneAngryGamer or Andrew Anglin’s gaming forum, along with platforms like BoundingIntoComic, NicheGamer emerged proposing to fight against declining standards.
Along the way, we witnessed similar rises and falls of various platforms offering solutions on how individuals could break away and create their own successes.
Hatreon emerged as an alternative funding platform to Patreon but faced a swift demise, not due to lack of interest, but rather due to external pressures. Similarly, in 2018, Dick Masterson introduced “New Project 2” as a robust alternative to Patreon and SubscribeStar, offering fewer limitations on funding
However, despite efforts to regulate applications directly through his group, Mastercard abruptly shut down the platform in 2020, citing vague violations of standards without legal infringement. This pattern of independent crowdfunding platforms meeting similar fates is unfortunately common.
And that directly impacts anyone who was interested in actual fair and honest coverage. Because without a real alternative for funding, regular journalists are able to work with full incomes towards what they’re doing, which means dedicating countless hours towards anything they want, which right now happens to be protecting Sweet Baby Inc as all parties involved have similar end goals and political ideologies.
So, that’s my take on Gamergate. Despite its failure and the apparent complacency among most gamers, the situation isn’t entirely bleak. With sufficient determination and forward momentum, we can initiate changes on our own.
These ideas have the potential to resonate and influence others, sparking meaningful shifts in mindset.
However, this is a gradual process, and we shouldn’t expect quick results. For now, things might seem bleak. During GamerGate, gamers couldn’t unite properly due to a lack of cohesion, leadership, and the presence of grifting opportunists.
Similarly, I don’t anticipate this situation sparking significant change immediately; it may result in more of the same GamerGate dynamics. Nonetheless, it does create opportunities for people to become more curious and engaged, at least for the time being as a result of the whole Sweet Baby Inc fiasco.
It’s articles like those published by Kotaku, PC Gamer, and the Take This organization that reveal a cabal of diversification. The majority of game developers are deeply entrenched in the convenient financing of Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG), which fortunately is dwindling and likely to undergo rebranding soon.
Instead of creating games that consumers want to purchase, they’re fixated on ensuring that their products check off arbitrary diversity, inclusion, and equality boxes. This is why firms like Sweet Baby Inc are just one among many consultation companies that have quickly gained prominence.
It’s not because they excel at their jobs, more rather, everything Sweet Baby Inc has consulted on has been a narrative disaster that only garners praise from inner industry figures such as journalists, reviewers, and promoters such as Geoff Keighley’s Game Awards ceremony.
The vast majority of consumers are becoming increasingly aware of Sweet Baby’s poor storytelling. Moreover, given that they’re staffed by individuals who are prejudiced against White people, their enforcement of DEI/ESG standards results come out to be bland, uninspired cookie-cutter characters that are either Black or man-hating lesbians.
Consumers are making connections; upon learning that Sweet Baby Inc seemingly worked on games like Spider-Man 2 or God of War: Ragnarok, they silently think to themselves, “So that’s why it was worse than the predecessor.”
Particularly noteworthy is the stance of individuals like Dani Lalonders, a non-binary game developer currently involved in Marvel’s Black Panther project. Lalonders openly stated a reluctance to collaborate with White people, citing differences in game design perspectives.
While certain aspects may be deemed acceptable by White developers, they could be considered microaggressions by Lalonders and others.
A brief look at her LinkedIn profile reveals that Dani Lalonders served as a Narrative Designer for Sweet Baby Inc from October 2022 to May 2023. Discoveries like this shed light on the disdain that companies like Sweet Baby Inc hold towards consumers, as their employees and ex-employees that are openly racist towards White people.
The United States government are literally funding an anti-Gamergate initiative, the Canadian government is funding Sweet Baby Inc, corporations are given financial incentives to hire those from a diverse background or are of any other marginalized group, it’s called affirmative action and it’s very much a real thing.
The government purposefully wants to drive individuals into employment who gain the position over far more qualified applicants, majority of those hired are mainly women due to the supposed “wage gap” between sexes. To the surprise of nobody, majority of these women are radical feminists who infect the company from within and if given higher authority aim only to hire those like themselves.
Mainstream game developers have long since been compromised, they are infested with progressives and unqualified personnel that chew into a studio’s budget and push certain narratives and themes.
The quote “rewrite new history” comes to mind.
The agendas promoted by individuals aligned with the anti-White sentiments of Sweet Baby Inc, who align closely with the interests of entities like Vanguard and BlackRock. These financial giants, through their ESG hedge fund collaborations, are willing to invest significant sums into companies that adhere to specific policies and meet woke criteria in their products, marketing strategies, and corporate hiring practices.
Gamergate never went away, it’s almost impossible to actually remove an entrenched monopoly in any field, however what you as a consumer can merely do to accelerate the demise of the gaming industry as a whole is to simply share the word, share Sweet Baby Inc’s horrible practices, the mass media collusion that’s defending them.
Expose them all, as global economies worsen, the ESG bubble is crashing down at incredible speeds, boycott any product that exists entirely to improve a developers ESG standing with BlackRock, and certainly boycott any game product made in collaboration with Sweet Baby Inc.
Their empire is crashing down before their very eyes, to think that this all began simply due to the fact that a singular employee couldn’t tolerate a Steam curation list and demanded its removal, we may half faltered during the initial Gamergate however this time around there’s no financial supportive rock for these people to fall back upon, nothing but sheer destruction awaits all those involved.
