Japanese Expert Cited to Defend Assassin’s Creed Shadows is Former Sweet Baby Inc. Employee

Video Games

This one goes from annoying to funny by the end. Sweet Baby Inc. has mostly been out of the headlines lately, which is a smart move; their best bet is to lie low for a while and hope the storm they helped create blows over soon. But they’ve crept back into the news through the next impending woke train wreck, Assassin’s Creed Shadows. The upcoming game from Ubisoft’s series takes place in feudal Japan, but it drew controversy when the trailer revealed that the male playable character was Yasuke, a historical black man who served as a vassal for Nobunaga, who, in the game, is portrayed as a samurai.

This caused an uproar not only because it seemed disrespectful (and obnoxiously mired in identity politics) to set an Assassin’s Creed game in Japan for the first time and have the lead not be Japanese but also because Ubisoft and/or other interested parties were working overtime to change Wikipedia entries so that they said Yasuke was a samurai in real life. But it didn’t end there; Ubisoft managed to fit a whole host of cultural and historical inaccuracies into Assassin’s Creed Shadows, like Chinese architecture and modern-day flags, the latter of which Ubisoft used without getting the permission of the Japanese reenactment group that owned the rights.

Assassin’s Creed Shadows can’t catch a break in Japan.

Japanese Reenactment Group, Sekighahara Teppo Corps claims @Ubisoft STOLE their banner SYMBOL, contemplates LAWSUIT.

Comment section is filled with displeasure about Ubisoft first claiming game was historical, then… pic.twitter.com/L5wgKJjE2F

— Grummz (@Grummz) June 18, 2024

There has been a concerted effort to turn this around on angry gamers, with games journalists calling everyone under the sun a racist, as usual. But it didn’t seem to work, and Assassin’s Creed Shadows is in trouble, which a reeling Ubisoft really doesn’t need right now. So, Ubisoft collaborated with the New York Times on an article defending the developer and calling gamers racists again. The defense is a hodgepodge of insisting Yasuke was a samurai while also saying Assassin’s Creed games have always been fictional; the writer blames Elon Musk for amplifying it, says Ubisoft devs got death threats (with no examples, of course), and quotes Ubisoft reps who stress how they used Japanese cultural experts to make sure they got every detail right.

DEI kills art

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) May 24, 2024

One of the sources he uses is Kazuma Hashimoto, who is described as a “Japanese consultant and translator in the video game industry,” who claims that all the criticism is coming from Western racists and that the Japanese posts calling out the game were mistranslations. Again, though, no evidence is presented; the actual translations of those messages are never discussed, and Ubisoft’s apology to Japanese gamers is glossed over as a magnanimous gesture rather than a desperate attempt to save face. Remember when IGN mistranslated those quotes from Black Myth: Wukong developer Feng Ji? That was backed up with the accurate translations. Hashimoto just makes a claim, and the New York Times insists you trust her because shut up, racist. (The same is true of their historical expert claiming that Yasuke was a samurai; when the leading proponent of this was dismantled and disgraced online, again, evidence was shown.)

Insane! Thomas Lockey, responsible for Japan’s major deception about Yasuke, was caught editing Wikipedia since 2015. He has since quit social media and claimed he will never play AC Shadows. Portrayed as a hero by the media, he’s now seen as Japan’s biggest historical scammer! pic.twitter.com/JCCTgW7BPr

— LearningTheLaw (@Mangalawyer) July 13, 2024

Well, you’ll never guess who Kazuma Hashimoto is. Okay, you probably guessed when you read the title. According to his LinkedIn account, he was a Sweet Baby Inc. employee from 2020-2023, where he worked as a consultant for video game companies like Square Enix, Insomniac, and… Ubisoft. This makes sense, as Ubisoft was previously suspected of having connections to Sweet Baby Inc. with Assassin’s Creed Shadows. He also worked as a games journalist, and he wrote an article about “Japan’s history of colonial rule” in relation to Animal Crossing. I have no idea how he linked those two things, and I’m not going to read that article, but it seems like it’s probably a stretch.

The Ubisoft “expert” from Sweet Baby Inc. that they cited to show “Japan is cool with Assassin’s Creed” has locked their account, but not before Japanese found this… pic.twitter.com/opW3OuRm5V

— Grummz (@Grummz) September 19, 2024

He also wrote one about the extent to which one can be gay in Dragon’s Dogma 2, an action RPG from Capcom:

As expected. pic.twitter.com/p2ZKFEPv1g

— Rosary Warrior John F Trent (@jftrent) September 19, 2024

This guy is not exactly a reliable source. The association with Sweet Baby Inc. would have sealed that by itself, but the weirdo articles he writes demonstrate an agenda, and I trust the actual Japanese people who were unhappy with Assassin’s Creed Shadows more than him. But things aren’t going so well for Hashimoto; in a recent Twitch stream, Hashimoto – after admitting that Japanese people were mad about a lot of the Assassin’s Creed Shadows mistakes – said that developers don’t want to hire him anymore because he’s associated with Sweet Baby Inc. Smash JT has a video and accompanying article that go in-depth about Hashimoto, who is apparently a trans man who is not using his real name:

The bottom line is that Sweet Baby Inc. has become a toxic brand for game developers, which is a good step in the right direction.

Let us know what you think about Assassin’s Creed Shadows and Sweet Baby Inc. being a red flag for video game companies in the comments!

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