It can seem easy to throw around the phrase “Get woke, go broke” these days, but as far as adages go, it does seem to be proved correct with increasing regularity and speed these days. The latest to suffer a big loss as a result of pandering is Warner Bros. Discovery via their games division, due to Suicide Squad: Kill The Justice League.
If you remember, back in March, a row exploded online. It was revealed that a consultancy called Sweet Baby Inc. was involved in this game and others. What is Sweet Baby Inc.? According to their website:
“Founded in 2018, Sweet Baby Inc. is a narrative development and consultation studio based in Montreal and working around the globe. Our mission is to tell better, more empathetic stories while diversifying and enriching the video games industry. We aim to make games more engaging, more fun, more meaningful, and more inclusive, for everyone.
We believe you need diverse voices to solve diverse problems. Sweet Baby Inc. provides narrative consultation at any stage of development, boasting a talented team with vetted industry experience to best bring your story to life.”
Services offered to game developers include “Narrative” and “Representation”.
When gamers rejected products Sweet Baby Inc. had been involved in, going so far as to curate a list of titles to avoid, Sweet Baby employees had online meltdowns, attacking gamers. Hit pieces were published against the makers of the list, and then shared among gamers to be ridiculed and mocked.
It backfired massively as it emerged Sweet Baby had been threatening game developers with consequences if their services were not deployed on titles. Gamers made the company toxic and untouchable.
One of the biggest titles caught up in this was Rocksteady Studios’ live-service game Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League.
In the Warner Bros. Discovery quarterly financial results call, the failure of the game was highlighted as a particular cause of some major losses in one division. After nine years of development, the game cratered, with most commentary online pointing to the involvement of Sweet Baby as a reason gamers simply turned away from it.
WBD CEO David Zaslav called the release “disappointing” and CFO Gunnar Wiedenfels highlighted a negative $200 million impact on company earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization.
Game publishers continue to distance themselves from Sweet Baby.
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