The 7-Day Disaster: Why Sweet Baby Inc Is Ruining Modern Gaming

Stop blaming the developers. Stop blaming the hardware. The rot is in the writing room.

I spent 20 years playing games where the story served the gameplay. Now, the gameplay serves "The Message."

Modern AAA gaming isn't dying by accident. It is being suffocated by a layer of middle-management consultants who don't play the games they edit.

The last week proved it. The backlash against Sweet Baby Inc (SBI) wasn't a harassment campaign. It was a consumer revolt.

Here is why the industry is panicking.

The "Consultant" Scam

Studios used to hire writers. Now they hire sensitivity filters.

Sweet Baby Inc isn't a development studio. They don't code physics engines. They don't optimize frame rates. They "consult" on narratives.

I looked at their portfolio. It’s extensive. God of War: Ragnarok. Spider-Man 2. Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League.

The pattern is identical.

Legacy characters are deconstructed. Dialogue sounds like a Twitter thread. Heroes are lectured by side characters.

This isn't organic writing. It is checklist engineering.

SBI comes in to "fix" scripts. They sanitize conflict. They swap character traits to hit diversity quotas. They ensure nobody is offended.

But when you try to please everyone, you entertain no one. Friction creates heat. Heat creates interest. SBI is the ice bath of creativity.

The ESG Score Addiction

Why do billion-dollar companies hire these firms? It’s not for the players.

It’s for the shareholders.

Investment firms like BlackRock and Vanguard push ESG (Environmental, Social, and Governance) scores. High scores mean easier access to capital.

Hiring a DEI-focused narrative consultation firm is a cheat code for executives.

1. Hire SBI.
2. Tick the "Inclusive" box on the annual report.
3. Keep the ESG score high.
4. Secure the investment money.

The product suffers. The stock price eventually drops. But the executives get their bonuses in the short term.

They are optimizing for a spreadsheet, not a user experience. You are not the customer anymore. The investor is. You are just the exit liquidity.

The 7-Day Reality Check

The "Sweet Baby Inc Detected" Steam curator group changed everything.

In seven days, a simple list grew to hundreds of thousands of followers. It didn't call for violence. It didn't break laws. It just listed games.

It said: "This company worked on these games."

That’s it.

The reaction from the industry was telling. SBI employees panicked. Journalists wrote hit pieces. They tried to get the group banned.

Why?

Because they fear information.

If players know a game has been "sanitized" by consultants before launch, they won't buy it. The industry relies on the pre-order hype cycle to hide the mediocrity of the writing until the refund window closes.

That curator group popped the bubble. It gave consumers a signal.

Signal: SBI involved. Action: Do not buy.

Rocksteady’s Suicide Squad failed. It was a live-service disaster with a script that mocked its own source material. The market rejected it. $200 million down the drain.

The 7-day surge of that Steam group proved that gamers are tired of being lectured.

The Death of Subtlety

Great art is subtle. It trusts the audience.

Bioshock critiqued objectivism without a consultant telling you what to think. Metal Gear Solid discussed nuclear proliferation without a sensitivity reader.

Modern consultation destroys subtlety.

They don't trust you to understand themes. They have to spell it out. They replace subtext with text.

When you play a game touched by this philosophy, you feel it. It feels patronizing. It feels artificial. It breaks immersion immediately.

I spoke to a dev from a AA studio last week. He said the mood is shifting. The fear of "cancellation" is being outweighed by the fear of bankruptcy.

The Hot Take: The AAA Crash is Here

We are witnessing the 1983 video game crash in slow motion. But this time, it isn't about quality control of cartridges. It's about quality control of ideas.

Here is my prediction:

Within 12 months, "Narrative Consultation" firms will be blacklisted quietly.

Studios won't announce it. They will just stop renewing the contracts. The financial risk is too high. Suicide Squad proved that "modern audiences" do not exist in large enough numbers to support $200M budgets.

The pendulum is swinging back. Hard.

The future belongs to indie devs and AA studios who answer to players, not consultants. The era of the $70 lecture is over.

When was the last time a AAA game story actually surprised you?