Fighting Game Community (FGC) General - The history of FGC drama, general FGC shenanigans, and directory to more eccentric individuals and subcultures within the community

[Sir Wesley Tailpipe]

Lab Zero is currently imploding in on itself and Skullgirls is fucking dead. Mike Z got his final cancellation today, with employees leaving the company.

https://twitter.com/ClickAgain/status/1297622837541261312

This is from Brian Jun, EU03, one of Lab Zero's founding members aside from the main trio.
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Spoiler: Story/Accusations #1

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TL;DR -- After the BunnyAyu shit, Lab Zero's "board of directors" (which likely included Mariel Cartwright and Jun himself) tried to oust Mike. Mike at first agreed, but only if they paid him a large severance check and/or likely gave him rights to the Skullgirls engine.

Of course, Lab Zero is a fucking financial shitshow of a company, so of course, they couldn't pay him. So Mike decided that he would stay.

Better yet, the "board of directors" is full of such fucking smoothbrained morons that they ACTUALLY thought it was a good idea to fucking give Mike the power to fire all of them.
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They basically went "Hey, hold the company real quick for us while we draft up the paperwork to get you fired."
and then Mike went "lul thanks dumbass, you're all fired, get fucked faggot now I'm Lab Zero games".

This is from a member who did stuff for Lab Zero but left after the Ayu shit.

https://twitter.com/necrosofty/status/1297642777069514752

https://archive.md/pdmx6

Spoiler: Story/Accusations #2

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They even gave the reason for why Alex Ahad, the main artist, was fired. It wasn't Mike Z who did it, even though people suspected it was him. It was the same people who tried to oust Mike Z who fired Ahad.

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Alex sued for wrongful termination and got a fuckton of money. This definitely must've shot a massive hole through the already financially sinking ship that Lab Zero is.
However, the same sentiment that Alex is a douche isn't shared by all of the members (though this one is a contractor (and a major sperg))
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another funny pic because this guy loves to spaz the fuck out about everything:
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"Hostile" is a common term used in every one of these "Fuck Mike Z, I'm leaving Lab Zero" posts.
From what I see, "hostility" to these spineless faggots is being told "no" or having disagreements with someone, like in the case with Alex.

He was clearly very protective of the Indivisible concept as rumors said, and of course was hesitant to change anything about it since it was basically his 2nd passion pet project so they terminated him. And, of course, removing him from the project is what lead us to getting the utter borefest that Indivisible is today. Gee, who would've guessed!

With Mike, it's him being a picky autistic fuck who was really choosy as to what he added or didn't add to the engine. Nice that @necrosofty admitted that he and others were so pussy they needed to talk shit on him in the DMs since they couldn't confront him meaningfully.
In other cases, like that of Beezul and his crazy fucking rant over Mike Z, "hostility" means "he made jokes that made me feel uncomfy" meanwhile Beezul himself admitted to wanting to hit Z several times for his bad jokes.

Now you may be asking what Mariel's doing right now?
She's on the side of the people against Mike Z, liking posts about how awful he is and why people quit. Like these.
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I expect her to make a tweet on this eventually.

Even one of the two original "accusers", Carbonbae, came out of the woodwork to accuse Mike of even worse shit that she for some reason didn't say before when she accused him the first time.

Spoiler

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Spoiler: Sawnicfawx is sad too :'(

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I don't even know or care who this fucking cunt is or why she keeps shoving her dumb fat mouth into this either:
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i know she's a TO or something but holy shit shut the fuck up

Mike clearly wanted to kill Lab Zero after this mutiny happened one way or the other. Either he left and took a sizeable chunk of money from them along with the rights to the Skullgirls engine, from a game which is Lab Zero's only viable way of making money nowadays, OR, he stays and the people against him leave, the people against him being almost entirely comprised of the company's artists.
Regardless, the company was deep in shit creek as soon as Bunny cried harassment after starting her cringy DM conversation with Mike.

TL;DR -- Skullgirls is a fucking cursed game with incompetent management and a creative team full of backstabbing snakes.
TL;DR;DR -- Never, EVER get involved with cosplay thots
TL;DR;DR;DR -- YandereDev is happy.

Worst possible ending: Mike Z Holowka's himself and every snake pretends to cry in sympathy.
Best possible ending: Sonicfox necks himself over all of this.

Personally, I wish I could try and get my boss ousted/fired for being an assertive/aggressive dick. If only jobs worked that way in real life.

And damn, who would've thought making an indie game company comprised almost entirely of porn artists and Tumblr users would end badly?

You mean all that “diversity” in the workplace somehow DIDN’T make everything a perfect utopia?

My monocle fell so fast it shattered the sound barrier!

 

[Burning Fanatic]

Afaik, a game like Skullgirls can’t be replicated nor have artists replaced so easily. It would make sense for perhaps some 3D games with existing models and assets to work off of. A huge part of this game’s charm is its fluid animations and 2D art style, which takes a ton of time and resources to develop and especially refine.

Though none of this even really matters when the company itself, or at least Mike Z, is now facing a ton of scrutiny.

 

[Neil]

I don't buy the idea that Mike "accidently" got complete control of the company, thats probably more of a manipulation of the truth

Yeah, that's pretty suspect.
The whole "Mike Z betrayed us, he isn't the person we thought he was, we were best friends forever" shit doesn't make sense when you combine it with "Mike Z sexually harassed me and was a major jackass bully in the office for nearly a decade" complaints these people make. Again, these are people in their late 20's and 30's, they aren't kids.

Hell, think about it. According to Personasama/Jonathan Kim, the guy got 100% total control of the company at some point in March. They clearly trusted him enough up until that point to hand the company over to him, and they clearly thought he was a "good" enough person to allow them all equal share in the power. It reeks of opportunism that they'd use the Bunny incident as a final way to grab power from Mike once and for all in order to oust him entirely.

Also, EU03 trying to paint Ahad in a bad light is fucking stupid too. The fact that he was even able to win a sizable settlement prize from LZ shows that whatever bullshit excuse or accusations of wrongdoing they used to wrongfully terminate him was flimsy and, well...bullshit.

Mariel's accusations hold the most weight, though, and I can see Mike being enough of a sperg idiot to unironically tell her to schlick to get herself to sleep, probably thinking that he was being helpful or something. Mike is definitely an unprofessional idiot and a PR nightmare, there's no two ways about it.

Whatever happens, I just want to remind the world that Ultradavid is a piece of shit and I hope he gets BLM'd.

As for the FGC, let it die. The companies don't care in the slightest, and at this point it's been terminally infected with GDQ ilk.

Seconded, fuck UltraDavid.

 

[Super Sad Smile]

This reminds me of when everyone started dogpiling on the night in the woods creator. Indie devs are fucking sharks feeding on nothing but clout. Hope people stand up for Mike

 

[PrincessHomura]

This reminds me of when everyone started dogpiling on the night in the woods creator. Indie devs are fucking sharks feeding on nothing but clout. Hope people stand up for Mike

Nobody is going to stand up for Mike, because to the general public he's always been a dick. A competent dick who's really good at coding, by all means, but he's been a self-serving smug asshole for years and nobody who doesn't know him likes him at all as a person.

Now, apparently, the people who know him have decided to not like him which all seems to be an underhanded power play more than anything else, but the fact remains - Mike Z really doesn't have anyone around to stand up for him. Even the people that think he's not in the wrong here are mostly laughing because it's happening to specifically him.

 

[Celebrate Nite]

Lab Zero's parent company is officially giving them the boot

 

[HumanHive]

Lab Zero's parent company is officially giving them the boot

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Oh boy! I can’t wait for Skullgirls 2 to be a tranny infested mess!

 

[Dr. Geronimo]

Oh boy! I can’t wait for Skullgirls 2 to be a tranny infested mess!

I wouldn't blame anyone for thinking it already was though.

 

[Itu aru kamusu tugeza]

I’m relatively unfamiliar with the history of these companies, can anyone offer a quick writeup on who all these people are?

 

[Corn Flakes]

Oh boy! I can’t wait for Skullgirls 2 to be a tranny infested mess!

Skullgirls 2: twice the furries, twice the trannies, half the girls*!
*The other half will be available via DLC.

 

[Neil]

Lab Zero's parent company is officially giving them the boot

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LMAO @ TRUSTING SKULLGIRLS WITH AUTUMN GAMES

Skullgirls died its first death when Autumn Games got caught and sued and lost $8.1 million+ because they were too fucking incompetent to properly secure the rights to the copyrighted songs they used, as well as $15 million because of bank loan fraud.
Autumn Games froze the whole project and laid off literally every member of staff working because of their incompetence and lying to the bank, which is why the life-supported crowdfunded circus that is Lab Zero exists today.

Either Mike's going to sue for rights to the engine or Autumn's going to fuck the project up even worse somehow. Skullgirls was dead to me as soon as it was revealed that Alex left, especially since he had plans for a straightforward story for the sequel, as the first game (or really, now, the only game) is basically just a bunch of "What if?" stories. Hell, the original animation team is uninvolved with the game now, Skullgirls is fucking kill.

The best AG can wring out of SG now is a "Filia is now out as Skullgirls' first openly gay character!" or "Announcing Sonicfox, Skullgirls' FIRST EVER nonbinary black gay furry charcter!" article two years from now before giving up on the title entirely.

 

[AutoGuyNoFile]

Oh please. We'll be WISHING we got an awful Skullgirls 2. Instead they'll just shit up Skullgirls 1 with patches making it impossible to play the good version ever again.

I’m relatively unfamiliar with the history of these companies, can anyone offer a quick writeup on who all these people are?

Okay so Skullgirls was pretty much a labor of love from two people: Mike Z, a pro Marvel VS Capcom 2 player and Alex Ahad, an artist. These two people are the heart and soul of Skullgirls and together they managed to cobble together a small team and release their dream fighting game. Now they've both been MeToo'd and their dream game is going to try to continue on without the people that made it.

As for the companies? Lab Zero are the makers of Skullgirls, Autumn Games is the publisher, and Hidden Variable are the makers of Skullgirls Mobile.

 

[Neil]

Oh please. We'll be WISHING we got an awful Skullgirls 2. Instead they'll just shit up Skullgirls 1 with patches making it impossible to play the good version ever again.

Okay so Skullgirls was pretty much a labor of love from two people: Mike Z, a pro Marvel VS Capcom 2 player and Alex Ahad, an artist. These two people are the heart and soul of Skullgirls and together they managed to cobble together a small team and release their dream fighting game. Now they've both been MeToo'd and their dream game is going to try to continue on without the people that made it.

As for the companies? Lab Zero are the makers of Skullgirls, Autumn Games is the publisher, and Hidden Variable are the makers of Skullgirls Mobile.

Really, only Mike was fully #metoo'd. Alex just had more vague allegations of "he was hard to work with, fuck that guy" from these snakes.
Alex's lawsuit against them and the supposedly large amount of money he won from them in the settlement is proof enough that their claims against him at least were total bullshit.

The saddest part about it is that Alex now has no real reason to return to the game industry after seeing how toxic it is. He's making a killing off of patreon, selling artbooks, and doing illustration fulltime. Happy for him, though.

 

[Wünderkind]

 

[Dr. Geronimo]

Okay so Skullgirls was pretty much a labor of love from two people: Mike Z, a pro Marvel VS Capcom 2 player and Alex Ahad, an artist. These two people are the heart and soul of Skullgirls and together they managed to cobble together a small team and release their dream fighting game. Now they've both been MeToo'd and their dream game is going to try to continue on without the people that made it.

As for the companies? Lab Zero are the makers of Skullgirls, Autumn Games is the publisher, and Hidden Variable are the makers of Skullgirls Mobile.

Also, Lab Zero also made the abysmal game Indivisible. Just feel like people shouldn't forget about that shitty thing.

 

[AutoGuyNoFile]

Really, only Mike was fully #metoo'd. Alex just had more vague allegations of "he was hard to work with, fuck that guy" from these snakes.

The sad thing is, YEARS ago, back when Lab Zero had to break up and reform due to publisher bullshit I DO remember hearing Mike Z was kind of a dick. Friend of mine knew some of the artists that worked on Skullgirls and said they were underpaid and shit...which I mean no surprise. Half of what makes Skullgirls amazing is that it's the kind of game a normal company could NEVER make because it would be too expensive. I think everyone was underpaid for it, though Mike was reported to be blowing a lot of smoke up people's asses about how successful it would be and how much money they'd make in the long run.

But at the same time, it ain't Skullgirls with Mike and Alex...and now I'm worried about the new character.

I'm calling it now: Annie is gonna be stupid overpowered and they're going to completely fuck up the game balance. Also predicting they'll ruin some random bits of code causing the game to function poorly. Not sure where, maybe they'll accidentally bungle the netcode, maybe they'll accidentally introduce hard crashes, but I have zero faith in this next patch.

Also, Lab Zero also made the abysmal game Indivisible. Just feel like people shouldn't forget about that shitty thing.

You know...I've been looking into that and am curious why you say it's abysmal. I remember being interested because it's a Valkyrie Profile clone that seemed to be approaching it from a more actiony standpoint, then I saw the shit Steven Universe looking character designs and figured Lab Zero was pozzed, then I see footage with boob jiggle everywhere and I'm like "Well maybe they're not so pozzed?". Was gonna pick up the Switch release but didn't get around to it yet.

 

[JamusActimus]

You know...I've been looking into that and am curious why you say it's abysmal. I remember being interested because it's a Valkyrie Profile clone that seemed to be approaching it from a more actiony standpoint, then I saw the shit Steven Universe looking character designs and figured Lab Zero was pozzed, then I see footage with boob jiggle everywhere and I'm like "Well maybe they're not so pozzed?". Was gonna pick up the Switch release but didn't get around to it yet.

The gameplay has no depth at all it feels like a mobile game. The level design and core gameplay are just plain bad. The characters are pretty one note and boring , the story is cliche and the world lacks charm.
The game is as much as a faillure as a rpg,action rpg and metroidmania as he is a succes in looking good.
The exploration doesn't feel good at all I am not kidding when I say the game feels like a mobile game go play skull girls mobile and you will see why I am sperging that like there are a lot of similarities and the gamefeel and approach.
Don't expect a rpg even Fifa has more rpg elements than this game.
Pure padding with the 59459598 playable characters but no real interresting way to customise your approach and interract in a meaningfull way with the game


Tldr:It's a pretty mediocre and primitive game with a "great artwork and animation" skin.
Pure trash good thing I didn't pay for it.

 

[blocklandspeedrunner]

/v/ and /vg/ are the new twitter to get #metoo'd at, what a time to be alive.

 

[John Titor]

I’m relatively unfamiliar with the history of these companies, can anyone offer a quick writeup on who all these people are?

I've met the artists, they're friends IRL who did stuff for conventions. However, I don't know how they got acquainted with Alex or Mike. I assumed they became friends some years ago when they formed the company.

 

[Borax Bozo]

I've met the artists, they're friends IRL who did stuff for conventions. However, I don't know how they got acquainted with Alex or Mike. I assumed they became friends some years ago when they formed the company.

The artists were in a loose collective well before Skullgirls existed - there's traces of their work from their days together on Blogspot of all things. (They were somewhat connected to Paul Robertson as well. They might end up at Tribute Games through his connections.)