Amid the many accusations of sexual harassment and worse that have come out recently, a new name can be added to that list. Mike Zaimont, a lead developer behind the popular fighting game Skullgirls and the RPG Indivisible, has been accused by two people of making demeaning and sexually suggestive comments toward them.
One of these accusers is Bunny, a Twitch streamer with over 1.5 million followers among her social media pages. Bunny recently picked up Skullgirls, which will be at the online version of EVO this year. Many in the fighting game community have praised her for her willingness to learn as a complete beginner to the genre. However, last week, she announced on Twitter that she would be stepping away from the genre. We learned more details last morning when she posted an Imgur gallery of a conversation she had with Zaimont. The conversation, which looks to have been from last month, started with Bunny thanking Zaimont with Skullgirl’s story mode’s portrayal of woman-on-woman BDSM, turned to Zaimont asking uncomfortably personal questions, such as her embrace of “thirst culture” in the way she speaks and presents herself and asking if she gets validation from the attention and what her family thinks of her profession.
After Bunny’s statements, others have come out with their own stories about Zaimont. Another accuser, writer/cosplayer/tournament organizer Carbon Grey, spoke up in a video describing their own uncomfortable encounters with Zaimont. “I don’t know what Mike said to [Bunny], but I’m sure it was s**** and I know that because Mike’s been making weird, sexual comments at me in and out of cosplay at fighting game events for actual years,” they said. Zaimont had already hurt his reputation with an extremely awkward “I can’t breathe” joke during a Skullgirls tournament stream earlier this month. This newest controversy has already pushed several prominent fighting game players, such as Dominique “SonicFox” McLean, away.
