Flintlock: The Siege of Dawn Gets Big Media Push As Sweet Baby Inc. Influence Looms

Video Games

The next game to have Sweet Baby Inc.’s influence is on its way, and this one is disappointing because the studio behind it indicated they were reversing course. A while back, Kabrutus, the creator of the Sweet Baby Inc. Detected Steam curator and the website DEI Detected, appeared on the Geeks + Gamers weekly YouTube program Tuesday Night’s Main Event and revealed that a game developer had gotten in touch with him to say that the company had gotten rid of all the elements of the game that Sweet Baby Inc. had worked on and had asked him to take the game off of Sweet Baby Inc. Detected. At the time, Kabrutus was still trying to verify if what the dev said was true.

That game was Flintlock: The Siege of Dawn, and the developer was A44; since then, they never confirmed the purging of Sweet Baby Inc.’s DEI injection, so Kabrutus kept them on the SBI list.

Hey guys, I added another game to my curator list. The game is called Flintlock: The Siege of Dawn, and as shown in this physical copy of the Edge magazine, it involves Kim Belair (Sweet Baby Inc. CEO).

I have waited a bit before deciding to add this one because a dev from… pic.twitter.com/tXPXyC33Lo

— Kabrutus (@kabrutusrambo) March 20, 2024

Lisy Kane, the senior operations and growth manager for Flintlock’s publisher, Kepler Interactive, was none too pleased and shared her frustration on X (this is a screenshot courtesy of That Park Place because she blocked me; I’m always shocked when someone like this even knows who I am):

Around that time, Mark Kern, the former Blizzard producer who goes by Grummz on social media (and was also on that episode of Tuesday Night’s Main Event with Kabrutus), posted a story he got from a source, and while he couldn’t confirm the reporting at the time, he seemed to trust it. Now, it looks like he was right:

https://twitter.com/Grummz/status/1770824726807552188

Did you know the protagonist of Flintlock used to be white?

When COO (and Casting Director) Andrea Topps Harjo joined the studio, her first actions were to change the character to hire Sweet Baby Inc. and change the main character to a PoC.

This marked the beginnings of the… pic.twitter.com/DFBqVh69rE

— Grummz (@Grummz) March 21, 2024

Aside from working with Sweet Baby Inc. and making changes to the game, Audrea also directed numerous changes in HR in her role as COO.

In 2021, most developers were denied raises, and evaluations were postponed for at least 6 months. Audrea told HR to inform anyone who…

— Grummz (@Grummz) March 21, 2024

The state of the game is unknown at this time, but is believed to be in shambles after this 2 year round of DEI changes.

As we now know, a44 reached out to Kabrutus to refute SBI's involvement, saying they are no longer involved and all their changes reversed.

But when…

— Grummz (@Grummz) March 21, 2024

This is disheartening because, for a minute, it looked like a game developer was going to alter its game to push Sweet Baby Inc.’s influence out, which would have been a big sign that change was coming to the gaming industry, if only in fits and starts. But it didn’t happen, and it appears the people behind Flintlock: The Siege of Dawn dug their heels in when Kabrutus added them to his list. But we can take some solace in the fact that they recognized the ire Sweet Baby Inc. draws from gamers and wanted to avoid it, even if they didn’t go as far as changing the game. Flintlock will be released on July 18, 2024, and games journalists are currently stumping for it – but they’ve got their work cut out for them because it sounds like the game isn’t very good. TheGamer, Kotaku Australia, and Dexerto all tried to puff up Flintlock, but it sounds like faint praise at best, with descriptions like “competent,” admissions that they’re “fearful for its future,” and calling it “ like Forspoken but actually good this time.” Vara Dark has a great video running down gaming media’s various attempts to campaign for Flintlock:

Comparing it to Forspoken, another game whose developer hired a DEI consulting firm, Black Girl Gamers, to make it woke, is quite revealing. It’s the same principle as movies and television: when you hire activists whose concern is DEI, identity politics, and pushing a message, the elements people care about – story, characters, gameplay – get left by the wayside, afterthoughts if they’re thoughts at all. Flintlock: The Siege of Dawn looks like it’ll be the next of likely many examples.