‘Skullgirls’ Animator Javier “AtroxChobatsu” Ulloa Defends Recent IP Censorship: “I Liken It To Housekeeping”
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Following the recent censorship of the Skullgirls franchise’s more risqué elements, fans have caught one of the game’s current animators praising the widely-panned sanitization efforts as a much needed round of “housekeeping”.
Eliza relaxes after winning the Skull Heart in Skullgirls: 2nd Encore (2013), Autumn Games
The current situation surrounding the once-popular fighting game franchise stems from the June 24th announcement that, “in the spirit of better reflecting our values and our broad vision for Skullgirls moving forward,” its current development team had decided to undertake a massive censorship campaign against the entire IP.
“As we look ahead towards the future of Skullgirls, we have reflected upon past decisions regarding certain content that has undermined the many things that make Skullgirls truly unique and special,” explained Charley “MightyZug” Price, the co-founder and creative director of current Skullgirls Mobile team Hidden Variable Studios. “As such, as part of our most recent round of updates across all platforms (console and mobile), we have decided to make some changes to certain legacy content in the spirit of better reflecting our values and our broad vision for Skullgirls moving forward.”
Archive Link Skullgirls via Twitter
Effecting Skullgirls Mobile, 2nd Encore, and even the franchise’s Digital Art Compendium, this campaign focused on ‘cleaning up’ the series’ “allusions to real-world hate groups”, “character sexualition & agency”, and instances of “racial sensitivity”.
And while these changes were met with massive backlash from the game’s now-alienated original fanbase, it appears their criticisms have ultimately fallen on deaf ears, as a leaked conversation from a Skullgirls dev team Discord server has revealed that those in charge of the franchise are basking in their successful suppression of the series’ original identity.
Parasoul and the Black Egrets stand tall in Skullgirls: 2nd Encore (2013), Autumn Games
As shared to Twitter by a number of users, the conversation in question sees a Discord user by the name of ‘Miazaki The Red Shinobi’ offering their support for the recent changes to current Future Club animator Javier “AtroxChobatsu” Ulloa.
“Yeah it’s still a majority of the ogs,” said Miazaki the Red Shinobi, presumably referring to the fact that Future Club is staffed by a number of original Skullgirls devs. “And I knew you guys were never comfortable with animating certain stuff in the game.”
“lol I mean, I liken it to housekeeping,” Ulloa replied.
The leaked Discord conversation, as shared by @KMR_Studios via Twitter
Turning to the fans who were unhappy with the changes, Miazaki The Red Shinobi asserted, “And to see so many people say ‘No this is what drew me in specifically’ just makes me pity them so much,” prompting Ulloa to confess, “[It’s] Like, there’s a dirty sock in the corner that’s just been there for years, and we only just had time to get out of the way now”.
“2011 was a different time also,” he further attempted to justify the censorship.
Cerebella greets her fans in Skullgirls: 2nd Encore (2013), Autumn Games
Following the leaking of this conversation, in an unsurprising bit of hypocrisy, fans discovered that while Ulloa claimed that the sexual elements of Skullgirls were too uncouth, he was completely fine with sexualized furry artwork.
In a tweet from July 6th, the animator can be seen sharing three pieces of ‘pin-up’ style fan art depicting his original character, a blue-colored female bear named Lotta, modeling a bikini.
@AtroxChobatsu via Twitter
As of writing, it seems these attempts to bring in ‘wider audiences’ to the Skullgirls playerbase have failed miserably.
According to video game analytics website Steamcharts, despite this censorship and the game being put on sale for only $2 during the recent Steam Summer Sale, the game has currently only managed to grow its average playerbase by less than 100.
Per the charts, prior to the game being censored in June, Skullgirls 2nd Encore was averaging 152 average players. In the last 30 days, this average rose to just 238.
The player numbers for Skullgirls 2nd Encore as of July 14th, 2023 via SteamCharts
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