Given that the game peaked at only 287 concurrent players at launch, I’m not really surprised.
After brutally murdering Luminous Productions (developers of Forspoken), Volition (the devs behind the Saints Row reboot), and Mimimi Games (creators of Shadow Gambit: The Cursed Crew), the infamous and notorious progressive consultancy group Sweet Baby Inc. has claimed yet another victim.
Surgent Studios has announced that they’ve laid off numerous employees following the commercial failure of Tales of Kenzera: ZAU.
Tales of Kenzera: ZAU was another one of Electronic Arts’ big publishing ideas, but it received minimal marketing, if any at all. Similar to last year’s release of Immortals of Aveum, which also led to layoffs, the game itself wasn’t particularly great, a colorful metroidvania that just oozed political correctness in terms of story and design.
The only significant coverage Tales of Kenzera: ZAU received on social media was due to the connections between the founder of Surgent Studios, Akubakar Salim, and Sweet Baby Inc.
Akubakar Salim had prior connections with Sweet Baby Inc co-founders Kim Belair and David Bedard, as well as Sweet Baby Inc employee and Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League Script Coordinator, Amy-Leigh Shaw. These collaborations took place at a company named Bebe Sucre LTD, which specializes in “ready-made interactive leisure and entertainment software development.”
According to the UK filing history of the company, Abubakar Salim was removed as a director on March 12, 2024, coinciding with the peak of the backlash against Sweet Baby Inc and shortly after Chris Kindred’s campaign to cancel the Sweet Baby Inc Detected Steam group.
The timing of Abubakar’s removal as a director was suspicious, almost as if he was distancing himself from Sweet Baby Inc as he prepared to release his own video game and wanted to avoid scrutiny due to his associations with the consultancy group.
This group allegedly tried to extort Chinese developers Game Science into paying $7 million for DEI consultancy for their game Black Myth: Wukong. Game Science denied the demand and, as a result, faced slander from Western media outlets over cases of sexism.
Tales of Kenzera: ZAU wasn’t a particularly great game. It peaked at a mere 287 concurrent players on Steam, with only 416 total reviews posted since its release on April 24th. Hardly anyone purchased the game, which was visually unappealing. EA’s negligence in marketing it, much like they did with Immortals of Aveum, left it largely unknown apart from the controversy revolving around Sweet Baby Inc.
Tales of Kenzera: ZAU seemed to come out of nowhere. The only recognition it received was due to its studio founder’s previous work with Sweet Baby Inc’s co-founders, a company notorious for ruining projects with their narrative design and forced diversity and inclusivity.
In response to the immense commercial failure of his game, Akubakar Salim quickly took to social media, proclaiming that he was the target of a racially motivated harassment campaign by gamers, echoing Anita Sarkeesian’s tactics by attributing the backlash to bigotry and playing the race card. Political activists echoed his sentiments and praised him, but did they actually buy his game? No.
The game aged poorly. In a desperate attempt to gather funds for his failed project, Akubakar Salim quickly put Tales of Kenzera: ZAU on sale following his June 1st tweet. However, this did nothing to recoup the money and time wasted by Surgent Studios, which ultimately had to reduce its headcount to stay afloat.
Claiming himself and his game as victims of racism to garner sympathy from activists on Twitter and through supportive articles from game journalists did nothing to salvage it.
Sweet Baby Inc., the prolific race-swapping consultancy group, has become the kiss of death for the video game industry. They’ve managed to sanitize and bastardize numerous video games in a short amount of time since their establishment and have put multiple development studios entirely out of business in their efforts to review and evaluate how modern games can be more accessible and inclusive to marginalized audiences.
Their failed attempt to incite a cancel campaign against an individual over a Steam curator group that merely lists publicly available information highlighted the collusion among game journalists. These journalists, exposed for their incestuous antics and progressive agendas during Gamergate a decade ago, spun the issue of ethics in games journalism as if it were merely about gamers being misogynistic and racist.
