The Sweet Baby Inc. influenced Alan Wake 2 is allegedly using bots according to social media analyst TheMasteroftheTDS.
A screenshot from Alan Wake II (2023), Remedy
TheMasteroftheTDS, who hosts the Gothic Therapy YouTube channel shared to X, “Alan Wake 2, a game known to be one of the games Sweet Baby Inc. was involved in, received an update March 6th, 2024, that lowered the official minimum system requirements for the game to run on PC.”
He continued, “It would seem that someone attached to Remedy Entertainment may have been worried about the success of the game after Chris Kindred went after Kabrutus on February 26th, 2024. To promote the game along with the update, it seems that bots were deployed to praise the system requirement changes allowing them to run the game on their ‘potato computers.’ Seems there might be a system error in SBI’s bank accounts.”
He then shared numerous accounts repeating similar phases regarding Remedy Entertainment lowering their minimum GPU requirements to GeForce GTX 1070/Radeon RX 5600 XT, which Remedy announced on March 6th.
Alan Wake 2, a game known to be one of the games Sweet Baby Inc. was involved in, received an update March 6th, 2024, that lowered the official minimum system requirements for the game to run on PC.
It would seem that someone attached to Remedy Entertainment may have been… pic.twitter.com/v13hGY6WV4
— MasteroftheTDS (@MasteroftheTDS) April 9, 2024
He then shared even more alleged accounts that he believes are bots in subsequent posts.
— MasteroftheTDS (@MasteroftheTDS) April 9, 2024
And even more.
— MasteroftheTDS (@MasteroftheTDS) April 9, 2024
Interestingly, as noted by HomingAmplifier the CEO of Epic Games Tim Sweeney, who owns the company that publishes Alan Wake 2 previously shared that he believes astroturfing is “valid free speech.”
He wrote on X back in November 2016, “Social media that censors some users’ free speech should lose safe harbor protections and be liable for content posted by remaining users.”
In a follow-up he stated, “I see astroturfing as valid free speech. Users are smart and can spot it, and counterspeech draws negative attention to it.”
Tim Sweeney on X
Remedy Entertainment’s CEO Tero Virtala confirmed that Alan Wake 2 had not broken even in financial statements released on March 20th.
He said, “The sales of Alan Wake 2 started well despite a competitive launch window and an overall exceptional number of great game launches throughout the year. Alan Wake 2, as a digital only release, had sold over 1 million units by the end of the fourth quarter of 2023 making it the fastest selling Remedy game. I want to thank the development team for their incredible effort in getting Alan Wake 2 done.”
However, he then revealed, “As Control proved, a great quality game can have excellent longtail sales and we expect this to be the case with Alan Wake 2 as well. Alan Wake 2 has already recouped a significant part of the investments made by Epic Games Publishing, and we expect the game to be a meaningful revenue and profitability driver for the year.”
A screenshot from Alan Wake II (2023), Remedy
Maybe even more interesting is that MasteroftheTDS’ post regarding these alleged bots surrounding Alan Wake 2 have brought out a number of individuals in the video game industry to criticize him.
First, Leto Colbran-Simpson, who is the Director of video game-focused talent agency Gamer Talent, attacked MasteroftheTDS as racist. He wrote, “Imagine being so unable to call yourself a racist that you think Sweet Baby Inc., a diversity writing consultant, is somehow responsible/linked intrinsitically to….botting positive responses to system requirement lowering? They already got paid before the game launched, bucko.”
Leto Colbran-Simpson on X
READ: Amid Sweet Baby Inc.’s Cancel Campaign, Anti-Defamation League Calls On Online Games To Be Regulated
In a subsequent post he added, “Sweet Baby Inc. is just some f***in company somewhere in the credits of a handful of games They come on when writers need some context for writing groups of people. It’s like blaming the fall of games on CoD asking a military expert what a gun is.”
Leto Colbran-Simpson on X
Former Call of Duty programmer Christina Pollock claimed the bots were a conspiracy to smear Sweet Baby Inc. She wrote on X, “the latest sbi conspiracy is that they have paid for an army of bots to praise alan wake 2’s recent patch that included performance improvements because of reasons every time i think it can’t get any dumber, it does.”
Christina Pollock on X
What do you make of this allegation that Remedy Entertainment is engaging bots to bolster sales for Alan Wake 2?
these delusional ppl need to start looking for jobs as servers…