This whole "told Sweet Baby Inc to get lost when they tried extortion" narrative is based on a Twitter post with no sources quoted.
The game blew up so fast because it's based on The Journey to the West, an extremely famous and popular story in China written 400 years ago. There are many millions of Chinese players, more than every other country combined. The Chinese couldn't give two fucks for Western identity politics, and it's laughable to think any western based DEI company could even try to coerce them.