Autumn Games Picks Up Skullgirls Devs After Leaving Lab Zero

It’s easy to forget that this “second wave” of #MeToo in the gaming space didn’t start or even stop with Ubisoft, who stood so far above its peers in both size and magnitude of abuse that it kind of overshadowed the conversation about the other studios caught in the wake. One such smaller studio that recently found itself torn apart by accusations of abuse would be Lab Zero Games, the folks behind Skullgirls and Indivisible, thanks entirely to project lead Mike “Mike Z” Zaimont, who filled the Lab Zero office with abuse, terror, and of course sexual abuse.

However, Lab Zero is privately owned and a little too small to have a proper HR department. So instead of kicking out the problematic head, most employees – both those directly affected and those who are simply sympathetic to their cause – have opted to leave the studio itself, leaving Lab Zero in a rather precarious position.

Now, normally, people might not care that much of Lab Zero shut down – they put out two great games, got destroyed by the hubris of their own leadership rather than any external forces, and the appropriate parties were held as responsible as they possibly could be in that situation. But a few days away Lab Zero announced a new character would be joining the roster of their popular fighting game Skullgirls in 2021, and now people are wondering if those plans have been changed – or canceled – in the wake of this mass departure.

The good news: the plans are still going forward, but it’s a bit of a mess.

See, Lab Zero might have created Skullgirls, but they don’t actually own the intellectual property. It belongs to Autumn Games, and to a lesser extent Hidden Variable Studios, who published the mobile version of the game. And they just announced that they would be working with the employees who quit to deliver the promised DLC – without Lab Zero or its troubled lead, Mike Zaimont.
 

“Autumn Games and Hidden Variable Studios fully support those employees who have chosen to stand by their principles and leave in light of [Zaimont’s] behavior, and we find their allegations to be credible. As such, effective immediately, we will no longer be working with Mike Zaimont or Lab Zero Games.”

This is about the best-case scenario we could have hoped for: everyone can still paid to work on the project they love, and the toxic source of their problems has been removed from the picture. Cheers to you, Autumn Games and Hidden Variable. In for the save.