The great author Mark Twain once said, “History never repeats itself, but it does often rhyme.” In the past week a Sweet Baby Inc. employee, Chris Kindred, attempted to shut down the Steam curator group Sweet Baby Inc detected. This attempt ultimately failed as the group’s owner, Kabrutus, has announced that Steam elected to keep the curator group active. The Gaming Access Media has now circled the wagons to defend Sweet Baby Inc. in the same fashion they did around Zoë Quinn when they launched their “Gamers are Dead” articles in August of 2014, which then triggered the start of GamerGate.
However, something else in this current situation looks familiar. Remember when game developer Eron Gjoni wrote “thezoepost?” One of the people who had illicit relations with Zoë Quinn and that inspired Eron Gjoni, who was her boyfriend at the time, to write ‘thezoepost’ (that was, in turn, the catalyst for GamerGate) may also be one of the individuals who is the catalyst for its sequel. In Part III of “The Sweet Baby Inc. Files,” we look at Maya Kramer (aka legobutts, Felix Kramer) and explore the connections between GamerGate and its ongoing sequel.
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To understand what kind of person Maya Kramer is, you first have only to look at her. We know appearances can be very deceiving, but in Maya Kramer’s case the only people that would match the “woke activist scumbag” stereotype better than Maya Kramer would be straight out of Central Casting. This woman has been involved in very shady activities for over a decade. For example, Maya Kramer and her paramour, Zoë Quinn, sabotaged a rival women-only game jam known as “The Fine Young Capitalists” through a DDoS attack on their site in February 2014. With the information in our possession, we could speculate that the motives behind this attack were possibly extortion and elimination of any competition with Zoë Quinn’s own game jam, which, like her Chuck Tingle project (which raised $85,448), has never materialized. She was suspected to have taken that money and ran.
Also, Maya Kramer was employed at a similar “consulting firm” that predates Sweet Baby Inc. called Silverstring Media, where she worked as a public relations and marketing coordinator. Among the list of advisors that Silverstring Media consulted with were Anita Sarkeesian and Jonathan McIntosh, two people of ill repute from the GamerGate days. According to a Reddit post, Silverstring Media is still active, but to our knowledge, unlike Sweet Baby Inc., they have yet to be working on major AAA titles.
Fast forward a decade later, Maya Kramer has once again stoked the ire of gamers. Though this tweet thread predates the Chris Kindred incident by a couple of days, you can see where this is going. But first, let’s look at what Maya Kramer said before the last tweet in her thread:
“i get to see a lot of tweets somehow blaming “diversity” as the reason for layoffs genuinely as if the economy was doing really great and capitalism simply worked before miles morales was spider-man*
*they also don’t recognize miles as spider-man
the weirdest part is when i see these takes from developers, or people who have dev bios at least idk it seems wild that a dev would see thousands of layoffs and blame not the industry giants but instead a 15 person narrative company founded by a black woman
these people think a company of narrative designers that freelances on projects has somehow single handedly caused the employment collapse in games, instead of, you know, the insane notion of infinite growth or capitalist greed. it’s easier to blame diversity than that somehow
i still think it’s way more likely that they know that’s not the case and are just fine with looking stupid so long as it justifies them being loudly anti-woke whatever that means
(we all know what it means)
the other part of this is it doesn’t matter if you tell them the truth. they think “DEI” just steps in and changes whole games: that creators are forced by some unseen hand (the govt, blackrock?? i guess? as well as just poc in general) to make games more inclusive???
fighting misinformation would be great! but social media + youtube is not equipped to hold people accountable to doing real research in good faith. just getting hits and proving their point in the absence of confirmation. it’s wild out there. nothing has changed. nothing.
sorry no one thing has changed: the number of people who understand that spreading misinformation just lets them be racist in public with no consequence has increased dramatically. that has changed. probably requires some fighting from those with authority! probably. 🙁“
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And then, to close off her thread, we get this tweet mentioning Sweet Baby Inc detected, which, as of this writing, did get community noted:
One could claim that this tweet might have induced Chris Kindred to engage in targeted harassment toward Kabrutus. Once again, Maya Kramer may have indirectly begun another war between gamers, the Gaming Access Media, and possibly some activist developers.
What has Maya Kramer been up to between GamerGate and its current sequel involving Sweet Baby Inc.? According to the information we have obtained thanks to investigative reporter Nick Monroe, things have been pretty pathetic on Maya Kramer’s end.
First, she complained about Lego bringing back police playsets after they were pulled in the wake of the George Floyd “Summer of Love” riots. This was performative. If she actually believed her silly rhetoric, she’d likely change her Twitter handle.
This tweet spits in the face of those in the gaming industry who worked hard to make fantastic games in the past, present, and future. It seems that if one is an activist, especially a Marxist, and doesn’t know a thing about video games, then one will get to the front of the line for being hired over someone who has actual credentials in game development. This may then get one VIP access to gatherings such as GDC, a once great think-tank of gaming now reduced to something more like the gaming industry’s version of Davos. Again, one of the people invited to speak at GDC is the CEO of Sweet Baby Inc., Kim Belair, who we covered in Part I.
This group of tweets centers around a never-released game called Blaseball. According to the Wikipedia description of Blaseball:
“Blaseball centered on an absurdist simulation of baseball, with fictional teams, featuring random events such as the “incineration” of players by “rogue umpires”. Each player had a name and a star rating, which was used to determine their stats, as well as amusing trivia such as their preferred coffee type and their pre-game rituals. After their first log-in, users would choose a favorite team and are given some coins. The game allowed users to use these coins to bet on the outcomes of the simulated games. Fans could also “idol” players and earn coins based on their performance. Each season lasted a week, and users were able to follow what happened in real time. The matches were organized every day on the hour, while the post-season happened in two parts, with wild card matches and quarterfinals happening on Friday and semifinals and finals happening on Saturday. Users were able to use their coins to purchase votes, which were used to vote on events and rule changes that will happen after each season on Sunday.”
In short, it’s a deconstruction or subversion of the game of baseball, and considering Maya Kramer and the company she keeps, it probably is what you think it is. Considering baseball is ‘America’s pastime,’ it’s no surprise these parasites want to smear their proverbial feces all over it.
Surprising absolutely no one at all, Maya Kramer takes to her favorite pastime: canceling those she feels gets in the way of either her or her Marxist ideology, complete with the usual racism, sexism, and using the anti-semitism straw man. As if Maya Kramer didn’t do any of that herself:
If people like Maya Kramer can mine tweets from a decade ago to cancel people, then we can do the same to expose her hypocrisy.
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It seems that Maya Kramer’s dream towns include Portland, San Francisco, New York, and Chicago.
This is the start of a tweet thread in which Maya Kramer is starting to read the room when it comes to Sweet Baby Inc., and she tries to assure her minions to focus on the mission to FUBAR the AAA gaming industry:
“if you’re being called scam artists for bringing diversity to games or getting accused of ruining games you’ve never touched – or being doxxed and harassed directly – please know that i and others are here as testimony to the fact that this will pass. i cannot help directly but i want you to know i’m living proof that we can get through this. your pain is real and just because you know things being said aren’t true you might feel it anyway. i relate, ive been there, and i know not everyone will be able to do this alone. nor should you have to.
i can’t help directly, and i wish i could make it all go away. and im sorry i haven’t always been able to say this when shit is happening! it happens so much. too much. any is too much. and my heart aches knowing others go through it.
if i haven’t been there in the past im sorry. i’ve watched hate campaigns and said nothing myself, thinking i have nothing to give. but i remember being alone through it. maybe me still being here can give some folks hope, and make them feel heard? idk.
i just know these leaks and other waves of hate right now have reached me at a time when i’ve got some confidence to say that the accusations aren’t the truth. if you’re being targeted and your words are being twisted please know i have empathy.
i think maybe this would have helped me when i was going through it – thank you to those who offered it even if you hadn’t been through it yourself. maybe hearing it from someone who has might be worth something. so my DMs are open while i hold space. reach out if it might help.”
As you can see, Maya Kramer took all the clout she got from GamerGate, and she got nothing out of it. Because of this, we see nothing but bitterness on her part in her involvement with Sweet Baby Inc. Despite an entire decade of dead ends, even though the gaming industry still rolls out the red carpet for this failed grifter, Maya Kramer shows that the only thing that’s changed about her are the pronouns on her bio. Maya Kramer is still the low-intellect, sadistic, bitter activist she was when GamerGate started.
This time, Maya Kramer might have bitten off more than she can chew.
Once again, a special thanks to Nick Monroe for the information gathered for this series.
What are your thoughts on the connection with Sweet Baby Inc? Leave a comment below!
NEXT: The Sweet Baby Inc. Files, Part II: The Rocksteady – SBI Pipeline
She’s definitely a Scumbag Card carrying Marxist at that.
She’s a he now.