alilich

[alilich]

THE QUARANTINE QUERY

(tl dr I didn't vibe with the demo for some silly and not so silly reasons)

Welcome to my special post where I will try to explain my personal problems with Quarantine and the general creative and narrative direction the next game seems to be heading towards. I decided to write a longer text instead of a couple of bullet points, because one does not simply write a thesis about a game just to later complain about it in a sarcastically laconic tone.

Things this essay is going to be:

my opinion/critique

an analysis

a reflection upon my feelings about the series in general

Things this essay is not going to be:

an angry rant about the new game in the spirit of they changed it so now it sucks

an attempt to prove that old pathologic = smart and new pathologic = stupid

Ok, with the disclaimers out of the way, let's get into it, and by it I mean levels of pretentious nerdiness unknown to many.

I wrote down four statements that describe my general feelings about the demo. They will serve as a frame of reference for what my critique will fundamentally touch upon instead of trying to fit every possible complaint I might have in a disjointed fashion. Here they are:

I feel like Quarantine expects me to:

Consider Dankovsky to be a specific Character in a specific Story

Believe Dankovsky has an internal world that can be mechanically represented in the ludo-narrative

Find said internal world to be compelling enough to let it filter the whole experience of the game

(presumably) emotionally connect with Dankovsky due to all of the above

If all this sounds confusing - good! Keep reading, it's going to get even better.

So, is Daniil a character?

Yes, of course he is. But what does it mean in the context of the original game compared to Pathologic 2 and now Quarantine?

Over the years I've come across vastly different opinions about the quality of character writing in the original Pathologic. I am not including complaints about the English translations or other technical aspects, just the most basic tendency of how the game portrays its characters. Most people I've seen who have passionately engaged with the game (including me) tend to describe the original game's characterizations as nuanced, complex and strangely realistic despite their rather theatrical tendencies. But I've also heard others say the exact opposite. That the characters don't feel like real people at all, their personalities are incoherent and fall flat due to a lack of consistency, and that every single one of them, from an old man to a literal toddler, falls back on the same pseudo-philosophical cadence, which while attempting to make them seem deeper ends up dehumanizing them even further. And even though those two opinions seem to be contradictory, I think that they are both the exact same reason why the writing of the original game captivates me so much. Because it doesn't really matter.

I wrote my thesis about the brechtian influences in Classic. One of the most characteristic aspects of the Epic Theatre is the attempt to remove illusions typical to traditional theatre, among which is the illusion of a character's psychology. I believe that you can absolutely argue that the characters in patho 1 were designed to behave like Brecht's characters - lacking internal psychology, mainly serving as mouthpieces for political and philosophical arguments, more so types than individuals. But here's the catch - I believe it's actually impossible to create a character completely immune to identification, because we as humans love to project our silly little emotions on pretty much anything, including animals and inanimate objects. Compared to those cases, Gorkhon's gallery of strange individuals is a painfully human display. So it's no wonder that many of us did indeed relate to those weirdos, just like nothing can possibly stop an audience member from identifying with Mother Courage or Galileo in Brecht's play. But the fact still remains that none of those characters were designed with this kind of simple emotional identification in mind and thus the attachment we may feel to them is more of a byproduct than the main goal. Taking a character who was meant to be analytically pondered and instead adopting them as a breathing human being is in that case, almost an act of rebellion. It's like saying, this is mine now.

Coming back to Daniil, this lack of clarity of how much he was written with this sort of characterization in mind is the main reason why I found him so compelling, he always kept me asking: is this part of Daniil as a coherent whole or is it just a philosophical stance which I should ponder at this moment or is it the writer's attempt at predicting what the player (presumably a straight male player) may want to say through this character? Does Daniil say "wow" because that's how he speaks, or is it just an oversight? Am I supposed to treat optional dialogue as things he would say or just things that are sometimes said in his world? The point is I DON'T KNOW and I love that I don't know that! It gives me so many posibilities! To me Daniil's character isn't so much about what he exactly says or does, but rather the internal logic that guides him. And I am the one who can choose its exact mechanism. He is mine.

Meanwhile, I feel like Quarantine wants me to treat Dankovsky like I would treat most other characters in traditional/popular media. Here are his personality traits. He is intelligent, he says so himself, and that lady over there also said it and he knows science and formulas and speaks Latin. Here are his thoughts. He has a memory about this thing. He feels guilty about that. I suddenly have a whole army of simple sentences that are meant to help me umderstand Daniil in this new iteration. Not so much a puzzle but a construction manual. And I'm not saying that this way of storytelling is fundamentally bad just because I can parody it as simpler than it really is. I want to engage with the new game's writing on it's own terms but so far I haven't done that mostly due to the giant dankovsky shaped object blocking the view.

Speaking of-

THE BACHELOR-CENTRIC MODEL OF THE UNIVERSE

This demo is so much about Dankovsky that it almost makes me embarrassed in his name. And honestly, I'm surprised I feel that way, considering how much I usually enjoy stories where a character's perception shapes the narrative to a great extent. I love symbolic dream sequences, guilt-driven visions and unreliable narrators. But the way Daniil's perception of himself and his surroundings doesn't really feel like a service to him as a character, but rather a narrative shorthand to spoonfeed me, the player, the most relevant information. The way Daniil's thoughts appear around objects is realistic to the extent that yes, human thoughts can be often rather simple and disjointed but there are moments where I think this mental streamlining is detrimental to his characterization and rubs him of nuance. The worst culprits of that are (IN MY OPINION):

Him calling Eva a ray of sunshine

The part where he references the fact that he and Artemy always fight about whose methods are better

Any time Daniil or someone around him refers to him as especially intelligent

Mr Little's Special Tutorial Perspective or Please Daniil Explain This To Me Once Again

None of those ideas are fundamentally bad, not at all. I'm curious to see his relationship with Eva develop, I want to see him interact with Artemy more like they did in the original, I can see some great ironic potential in the constant hyping up of Daniil's intellect and yeah, I hope Yakov is revealed to be some secret government agent or something. But I'm annoyed that I feel like I can predict all of this from just a couple of lines in the demo. I want to be confused and unsure of my own judgement. I want to be proven wrong, surprised, and ashamed of my own surface level analysis. And that can still very much happen, perhaps even in the comments on this very post or once the full games comes out. But right now I feel rather pessimistic.

I don't have a good segue for this part so now let's talk mechanics.

PRESS B TO EAT A CIGARRETE

The new mechanics try to break away from the body-first focus of the original game and the way Pathologic 2 expanded on those ideas even further. This time it's all about the mind, baby. Which - again - on itself isn't a bad idea. If this game was just 2 with different dialogues it would be very hard to justify its existence as a stand-alone product that needed to somehow be funded over those last 6 years. But the result to me feels more like novelty for novelty's sake. Not everything of course - the diagnosis part of the gameplay is definitely its most well-designed aspect, and there is a consistent logic behind it. Where Artemy saw systems, Daniils sees individual parts, where Artemy had to rely on luck, Daniil controls all the variables etc etc. The same, however, cannot be said about some of the other new mechanics.

Managing Daniil's mental state doesn't feel that much different than making sure Artemy drinks enough water and I personally think it's a wasted opportunity. I'm not going to insert myself into the discussion about whether the game's use of terms associated with bipolar disorder is accurate/tasteful because other people with relevant experiences have already voiced their opinions about that and will hopefully continue to do so in the future. My point is - regardless of what exact mental condition or more general function of the human psyche the game is trying to convey, it does so in a manner so simplistic that it doesn't encourage me as a player to connect with it on a deeper level. Apathy is blue because it's sad, Mania means, well, mania so it's red. Once again, I have only experienced a small portion of the game's final system so I might be in for a surprise and perhaps I will get to see Daniil experience something... purple?

Also adding to my previous point about switching perspectives - I think this mechanic will be an absolute gut punch in the final game. I hope it's something akin to the original meeting with the Powers That Be, especially with the way multiple characters can "jump" into one conversation at any moment. This will surely be utilized for some mind-fuckery and I can't wait to see it. I think this is also the one aspect of the demo that gives me the most hope as far as my beloved emotional confusion is concerned. Because what is the switching of perspectives supposed to indicate really? Are we supposed to filter it once again through Daniil's perspective because of the framing device of him recollecting the events? So nothing we learn by getting the insight into other characters' thoughts can be taken at face value because that's just how Daniil sees them? Are those other/new characters even real or just exist in Daniil's psyche? Does it have something to do with the time travel blahblah? Or are we not playing as Daniil at all but some other entity entirely? That's the main question I hope I don't get a clear answer to but rather contradicting paths to follow. But despite that optimistic outlook I still need to get into the final aspect that made it difficult for me to engage with the new game on its own terms, and instead deciding to take its dead corpse apart.

I CARE TOO MUCH BUT NOT ENOUGH

I just can't get over the fact how much this game wants me to identify with Daniil or at the very least find him cool. Cool as in how modern characters are often cool. Wet cats, chaotic bastards, jerks with hearts of gold and vaguely homoerotic energy with other male characters. And I'm not saying this as an insult, narrative trends are a thing, I find many of those archetypes to be endearing more often than not, but my problem is that it still only serves Dankovsky as our center of the world. By flanderizing him and making him fit into a more recognizable character archetype we lose the feeling of him being always at odds with the world around him, the way he used to be conflicted over every single thing in the original game. This new world is too suited for him to be a hero of his story, a tragic hero but a hero nonetheless, while in my opinion what made him uniquely tragic in classic was precisely the fact that he wasn't anyone's hero.

I know this constant comparison to patho classic can get tiring, so let me use another point of reference which is also the reason why I am even writing this post in the first place - The Marble Nest. I love the marble nest. I find its narrative structure to be expertly crafted, emotional beats placed in just the right places and godd i still cry over the fact that they put his soul into a nutshell. And the funny thing is that TMN does share a lot of similarities with the new demo. It's a Daniil-centric story with a framing device that encourages us to look at the entire experience as Daniil's impression of the reality around him. It's a short and rather simple experience with a strong central theme. So why do I feel so emotional when Daniil talks to the death in that game but feel pretty much nothing when he talk about dying in Quarantine? Maybe because The Marble Nest is still steeped so deeply in the theatre influences which I hold dear to my heart while Quarantine moves away from them and maybe towards another medium entirely. Theatre never pretends to be reality and it's artificiality is always front and center. Film meanwhile often has the tendency to try to replicate reality or even try to be reality itself. In one of those cases I feel like an active audience member and in the other like a passive voyeur of some vision of reality. Or to put it simply, in one case I am afraid of Death and in the other, I am watching someone act out being afraid of death. That is a highly personal preference though and I'm genuinely happy to see that many people do indeed relate to this portrayal of Daniil, especially when it comes to how his mental problems are displayed front and center. And that's amazing! I want to see all the fan input that comes out of it and I hope the final game delivers on everything they hope for. But for me? I think I might need to take a back seat, at least for now. Watch the scene from afar, perhaps get a fuller picture. Because I want to care and understand and know and feel. I really do. But sometimes it's not possible and that's also good.

So, if you've read this overwritten mess to the end, I want to thank you from the bottom of my heart and encourage you to voice your opinion. Art doesn't exist without discussion so let's discuss!

POST-SCRIPTUM - ON THE NATURE OF MAKING GOOD THINGS IN YOUR PAST

One last thing I wanted to add which feels highly relevant to the my critique is the question of what to do when someone says they liked your old work better? I like to think of myself as an artist and I think that many of us do, even without getting into how according to Beuys everyone is an artist. So you make a thing, some people like, perhaps many people do. So you keep making things, you grow with them, change, realize your old ideas were often childish or naive which you can only do through gaining experience. So you make new things, often drastically different from the ones you made before. And someone says "I liked the old stuff better". And they don't say it as an insult, even though it may sometimes feel like it. Because you cannot recreate whatever you did in your past. And you want to grow. Does that mean that you got worse instead? That you peaked in your past and it's all downhill from here? Of course not. You know that. I know that. I hope every artist knows that. And yet it still hurts. It hurts to be perceived as a line graph when in reality you are a recursive function.

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all images made by me, the ones with yellow background are from a shitpost animatic, the white one was a joke I made after hearing the famous"sherlock mind palace fruit ninja" pitch, and the last one is me in my Daniil cosplay. Goodnight Bikini Bottom

[alilich]

https://www.reddit.com/r/pathologic/comments/1jb0yea/icepick_have_announced_nikolai_dybowskis/

Be wary of any statements coming from IPL at this point. They posted this right before the demo release and at least on twitter their posts weren't successful and were drowned out by the comments about Dybowski. As I've said before this could very well be a smokescreen. It won't kill you to pirate the demo, and as I've discussed before doing so will only be benefitial for the employees.

Once I get confirmation that Dybowski is truly gone, from the employees and official records, I'll post it. In any case, all of his victims' stories still deserve to be heard. People need to walk away from this having learned something.

[alilich]

I think that a lot of pathologic discourse is so frustrating and convoluted first and foremost because the Kin culture was made up by mostly slavic russian people and we definitely have a problem with unrecognized racism in our country which is partly reflected in the game with its very half-assed attempt at representing cultural bias. The Kin are the Other, it’s as simple as that. Even when we’re playing as Artemy he has way more alienating options of interacting with his people than anything approaching understanding or acceptance.

In real life we had a long history with the people of Central Asia with mutual grievances and cultural misunderstandings culminating in russian empire’s colonization of central asia in 19th century (mostly to prevent england from gaining too much power). I should note that the Kin seem most similar to Buryats who became part of the Russian Empire even earlier back in 18th century as an agreement with China and Mongolia. The events of pathologic games seem to be happening sometime during the civil war (1917-1922) when a lot of the smaller people had to choose Red or White, some tried to refuse participation and paid a bloody price for it — what I’m saying is that indigenous people always played an active part in our history irl. Also, it’s honestly super convoluted because of the sheer number of different cultures that had to co-exist under the Russian Empire and then USSR.

BUT in pathologic the Kin is actually-really-magic people with sometimes contradictory beliefs, not based on any one real tribe in particular. Oh they do rituals where a beautiful naked girl is bled dry for Mother Earth’s sake? Hmmm that does seem Not Good maybe. Oh but the sacrifice totally works because their religious beliefs are 100% true? Uhh okay then! Real life patriarchal nomadic people might have had some outrageous ideas about women (for example you could technically ‘sell’ your Buryat daughter into marriage up to when the new socialist order was installed after the first quarter of 20th century, I think there’s something similar in classic pathologic, too), but they certainly didn’t have regular human murder rituals. But if the victims agree with their purpose to die and it even works as intended then does the ritual still count as terrible? Can other characters who don’t know that magic is real express outrage? Are the Worms in the wrong for repeatedly trying to murder Rubin who’s trying to save the town by going against traditions that forbid cutting bodies? Especially when he could have been adopted by Isidor and then it would count as okay (i swear i have theories about isidor and his relationships, he must have known and done a lot of things on purpose). Similarly to problematic issues that arise for when oppressed minorities are represented as mutants, monsters, aliens or whatever else, discussions will inevitably get muddled because of the fact that the Khatange just aren’t realistic and do not represent real life culture or behavior of indigenous groups. And part of them literally just aren’t human at all.

Personally, I couldn’t help but notice that most sexualization and graphic violence happens to the naked and young beautiful women of the Kin, and that’s just obviously the typical gamedev sexism and I think something of a personal interest for the head of the studio, the objectification of these women isn’t narratively challenged and we’re supposed to accept that that’s how the Kin is. Similarly, Khatange are explicitly compared to simpleminded animals not only by the Town people but also by the narrative and by Kin folk themselves and their extreme violence is excused by their beliefs. Even when these tensions could be easily explained by the terrible conditions they are forced to endure the narrative focus is shifted to anger about breaking traditions, not about the treatment they receive. The dialogues about the Kin in Pathologic 2 are mostly centered around magic, fortune tellings and the responsibility of becoming their new pastor. Ahhh just so many things don’t make sense about them even without the added difficulty of discerning differences between the classic pathologic and pathologic 2. How can you really get mad at characters calling a fictional unrealistic magical tribe barbaric when painting them as a whimsical barbaric people was the game’s intention? The main Khatange character Aspity is literally not even human! I think it’s telling that instead of creating a revolutionary figure (which would by the way be supported by history of many indigenous people in Russia) who’d be vocally pushing back against the erasure of the Kin, protesting the enslavement that came with Olgimskys, discussing ways of further assimilating the Town... We got a possibly-golem-shaman-witch who wants to revive the ancient magic of the Steppe.

So yeah, I don’t really get serious discussions of racism in relation to the game’s characters’ opinions. Oh, the known asshole Daniil Dankovsky called Khatange barbaric after like 3-4 people immediately tried to murder him on Day 1 without saying anything, oh that racist asshole. I mean come on.

I still like how he’s made softer and more interested in the Steppe’s culture in Pathologic 2 though. I hope whenever his route comes out there will be a more coherent picture of the Kin, preferably more respectful of the people it was inspired by.

[alilich]

Renata's tweet link, translation tweet link. the translator is right, Renata has been through an absolute living nightmare at the hands of IPL's head Dybowski. It's March now and I haven't seen anything from IPL in english regarding this, just posts about the new game, not that this would change his obscene and disgusting behavior that has already come to pass but it would at least be some sort of acknowledgment, removal or something. they seem to have someone skilled in english working PR lately so this should not be a barrier. there's really no excuse. i'll post it if they write anything but who knows after this long. ok here's the rest of the thread

[alilich]

New promo from IPL, still not a single word regarding Dybowski. As always it's encouraged that you comment and like comments addressing the situation and demanding a statement.

I've been trying to contact as many fitting journalists as I can find and fortunately we have two already working on the case, I'm just keeping their anonimity for now to make sure their work goes smoothly.

Meanwhile we also started suspecting Dybowski might be responsible for financial crimes within IPL such as complicity in money laundering. Here's what we have so far in case you want to add any financial info you may know about the studio:

[alilich]

Discovering Pathologic's "Autizm" emotion: a 10-minute overview of Pathologic's facial animation system, and the characters who are provably autistic, for real. :-)

[alilich]

SPEAKING OF. I'd very much encourage you all to comment about wanting IPL to remove Dybowski + make a statement on his actions on the new p3 devlog videos, as that has a lot of eyes on it!

[alilich]

Pathologic Pre-release Technical Demo (2002)

[alilich]

SurDno's P2ModLoader: a cross-compatible mod manager for Pathologic 2

After a few months of development, modder SurDno has launched his mod management solution for Pathologic 2. P2ModLoader allows you to install multiple assembly mods at the same time, manage enabled mods through an intuitive user interface, automatically detect mod conflicts, and view/edit save file information. This is a huge advance in P2 modding, and it's been my privilege to help test the loader -- try it out!!

My mods Dialogue Unmarked and Pocket Watch Saves have been updated with P2ModLoader installer files, and SurDno's published several new supported mods:

The Maw Exploit Fix: disable reputation scumming in the Maw

Skip Prologue: start the game at 7:30 on Day 1

Exit Freeze Fix: close Pathologic 2 without it crashing

Download P2ModLoader from GitHub or Nexus Mods!

[alilich]

A Complete Relaying of Dybowski's Abuse

TLDR: This post compiles all of Dybowski’s known abuse with evidence and quotes directly provided by former HSE students and IPL members. His abuse is large-scale and creates a clear HSE student to IPL employee victim pipeline. 

At HSE University (2017-2021), Dybowski committed several abuses of power towards his students which started with freshman girls aged 17-18 barely out of school, including sexual harassment, grooming, sexual comments, unsolicited nudes and later sexual assault. This included his grooming and marriage to Renata, since they married when she was 18 and his student. Dybowski would offer students visits to Ice Pick Lodge to “privately discuss their projects” and make sexual advances towards them. These visits have lasted as late as the start of 2022 under the guise of these students and ex-students visiting to help him with the early production of Pathologic 3. He would then hire them into IPL, both ex-students and current students, and escalate his abuse in the workplace. Dybowski sexually abused young female IPL employees, showed up to work drunk and greatly hindered the rest of the team, was utterly disorganized and incompetent, paid his employees a meager salary below the market level and used verbal and emotional abuse and intimidation tactics including death threats. He has a gun license, putting Renata and all her relatives including her son in danger of being murdered. 

Dybowski is an extreme conservative and his abuse is of a misogynistic, ephebophilic, colonial, and towards Renata also islamophobic character. It’s imperative that people stop discussing his artistic participation in IPL projects, as centering the conversation around abusers’ achievements is part of a rape culture that ruins and takes countless lives and threatens to take Renata’s and her loved ones’.

Renata won’t start a crowdfunding campaign as of now. A boycott is necessary for the IPL members’ safety, but CURRENT action should be focused on paying close attention to Renata’s posts and what she asks for from the public, sharing her story and that of IPL members and HSE students and fully siding with them. 

We openly appeal to compiling a list of Dybowski’s crimes and legally dubious activities so legal action is possible and widely called for. Judges are very influenced by public opinion and media. You can and should politely comment on the posts of IPL members who have come forward with the intent of collecting evidence of Dybowski’s abuses and illegal activities at the studio. It’s Renata’s express wish that you treat IPL members as her fellow victims and do not harass any of them, even those who’ve remained silent.

Google Docs version:

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I’ve been in contact with former HSE students and IPL members who wish to remain anonymous for safety reasons and I had their approval to share what I’ve been told. This is a relaying of all of Dybowski’s known abuse and a clarification of his situation at Ice Pick Lodge as it contains more evidence that can legally incriminate him. These former students and employees are now collecting evidence to back Renata’s claims in court and working on a statement/manifesto and I’m relaying their wishes, summarizing their accusations and preparing people for what they’ll publish before they manage to finish the document, as well as offer plans for action against Dybowski.

As it’s already widely known, Nikolay Dybowski taught as a game design professor at HSE University (School of Art and Design) in Moscow from 2017 to 2021 and has groomed several students of his from the ages of 17, with his abuse also targeting girls as young as 15 and dating to even before his tutorship at HSE. His sexual advances reached dozens, and his sexual comments hundreds of students. 

Renata herself is only 24 years old. She was an HSE School or Art and Design student and Dybowski married her when she was barely 18 and his first year student. During her second year (2019-2020), she had Yuriy at 20 years old and had to interrupt her studies to raise her and Dybowski’s child, only resuming them in 2022-2023. This year (2024-2025) is her final year at HSE. Many of the students working on this case were her classmates, know her closely and have seen her suffer all these years.

Dybowski was the head lecturer of the game development specialty at HSE and mostly a freshman year lecturer. He presented himself as a quirky, sweet fatherly figure which naturally made freshman students love and feel comfortable around him. He would start grooming students and openly flirting with them in their 1st year. There is extensive evidence from dozens of former students of his sexual harassment as well as unsolicited nudes. He appointed freshman students as his assistants and many volunteered because he’d created the image of a busy, genius found father and they felt the need to help him only to be left doing all his work for him, from making PowerPoint presentations for lectures to evaluating homework. At the same time these assistants would spend more time with him and thus be more accessible victims. He would have inappropriate conversations with students, making romantic propositions and sharing disturbing details about his personal life. There are numerous accounts by students of a story told to them multiple times by Dybowski consisting of him claiming he had placed a gun in his mouth in front of Renata's child. We could assume these claims were made to create an image of a troubled, unhappy person so as to make students feel sympathetic for him.

He would then invite these students to his studio claiming it was a reward for their brightness and artistic achievement, offering to discuss their projects with him in private, and then make sexual advances on them. This behavior continued during the early production of Pathologic 3 (2021-2022, until a bit after he was fired as he would still keep brief contact with his freshman students before they were warned of his behavior), when he would take girls and female-presenting students to IPL under the guise of them helping him with the game. At this point, all IPL members were very aware of Dybowski’s misconduct and some of them tried to shield the girls by telling them to leave the studio.

There’s also extensive evidence of Dybowski’s alcoholism and professional irresponsibility at HSE. He drank constantly during lectures, project presentations, evaluations and Zoom calls. Although Dybowski was the gamedev head lecturer, his specialty is writing and he knows little about actual programming and game design and as a result did an extremely poor job as a professor, but reputation holds a lot of power. Dybowski is aware of the societal support he has and bloats it to intimidate people. His former students confirm that when the 2021 allegations surfaced, Dybowski threatened one student who spoke up claiming HSE would file a defamation lawsuit against them with him as a witness, but this never actually happened. As former HSE professor Kirill Martynov pointed out at the time of the allegations, HSE as a whole is unable to file defamation suits, so Dybowski still tried to do this using IPL’s name instead. If Dybowski wasn’t guilty and this was indeed a case of defamation, he would have filed the lawsuit under his name. Instead, seeing that he would have no ability to prove himself innocent he wanted to use the collective HSE or IPL names as a shield and claim the lawsuit was lost because the institution itself didn’t present enough evidence of defamation. Proof of his failed attempt at filing a lawsuit with the IPL name as well as the court’s response to his appeal can be found in websites for legal monitoring of court cases and appeals:

There are no registrations of any lawsuit appeals against students in HSE’s name from this time period.

However, the HSE University higher ups did protect him in subtler ways. With these allegations there was a collective assumption that the game development specialty would be closed if Dybowski was taken to court as he was the face of the department precisely because of his fabricated image of a game developing genius. One lecturer approached a victim and relayed their evidence to the university heads and this made HSE quietly appoint another professor as head of the gamedev speciality while still keeping Dybowski employed under the condition that he stopped his abuse of students, which he obviously didn’t stop. This got him eventually fired with no official statements and no additional legal procedures. This situation was made all the more difficult because of Russia’s inadequate age of legality laws.

Many of the hirings at Ice Pick Lodge are his grooming victims, many of them still studying with him at the time of hiring, which to Dybowski means easy targets with no social or industry influence who will take any payment. Ice Pick Lodge having no official internship programs means he can hire very young people, barely legal teenagers, while raising no suspicion. After grooming and taking them to visits to IPL in their 1st year, he would then proceed to hire them, sometimes right after they finished their studies and other times while they were in their 2nd and 3rd years. Sometimes their work at IPL would be counted and reported as practice for their final year, which means HSE University was fully aware this HSE to IPL pipeline was established. This also means that Dybowski would have simultaneous control over significant parts of his victims’ lives, both academic, professional and financial. Success in all of these fields was, of course, dependent on how well they kept silent and yielded to his sexual demands. Many of his students seeked work in IPL because it was the easiest, most immediately accessible job opportunity they could get to pay for their studies. Some of them were in a dire financial situation after the COVID pandemic and the start of Russo-Ukrainian War, with many coming from poor regions of Russia and occupied territory such as Crimea and Donbas, Ukraine. 

In addition to his deeply irresponsible professional behavior at IPL which greatly hinders his team including irregular attendances, drunk tantrums, deleting entire chunks of story text and leaving the employees to rewrite it, using their work computers to flirt with other employees and on one occasion showing up drunk to a call with indie game studio of Disco Elysium fame ZA/UM who had offered them a collaborative project proposal in 2021/start of 2022, Dybowski has sexually pressured and abused several female and female-presenting IPL employees. In one case, he hired an incredibly talented student and then around 2021/2022, almost immediately after the allegations surfaced, still made numerous romantic and sexual advances towards her and then reacted to her rejection by firing her on the next day, which is illegal in Russia. He then proceeded to spread lies about her to his colleagues and other IPL members in order to ruin her reputation. Dybowski uses manipulation and intimidation tactics to keep many of his employees in silence, having gone as far as death threats. Dybowski is confirmed by a former IPL employee to have a gun license.

All of this has created a toxic and fear-based environment where the employees essentially believe they’re worthless and powerless without Dybowski, despite the fact that he clearly just orders people around and demands changes and general directions for the games’ themes and narratives while the rest of the team does the large majority of the actual work. Former HSE and IPL members claim IPL’s misogynistic abuse simulator Franz (2023) was fully written and largely designed by him, as indicated by its lack of quality and coherent vision.

As is also common knowledge, Dybowski was said to have sold IPL so as to make himself more financially unstable to dodge having to pay alimony in court, with the studio now having Popov Nikita Alekseevich as its current CEO. It’s legal for Russian companies to register the company in someone else’s name, in this case Popov, while the former CEO is still a shareholder and the de facto head of the studio, which certainly seems to be the case here. Russian law is very lenient with this practice and will only consider it illegal if there’s suspicion of money laundering involved, which doesn’t seem to be the case with IPL.

A comprehensive account of Dybowski’s behavior at Ice Pick Lodge was provided on Dec. 23 by a former IPL member writing under a pseudonym:

Here they also mention that when IPL was moving its offices to Kazakhstan and Cyprus (from 2022 to 2023), Dybowski was the first to move to Cyprus around the summer of 2022 and took Renata and her son Yuriy with him, only to completely disappear and become unreachable whenever he visited Russia. By 2024 they were living in Moscow again.

All of this has culminated in the current situation, with his soon-to-be-ex-wife Renata on DTF, where she accuses him of several types of abuse including verbal and emotional abuse, physical abuse in front of Yuriy, infidelity, financial blackmailing and finally child kidnapping:

One element of Dybowski’s abuse that I haven’t seen anyone tackle yet is that he targets an intersection of people belonging to many different minorities and is fully aware they’ll be more vulnerable because of it. This is important to understand so as to shatter the collective illusion that he’s anything other than a hypocritical lying conservative loser, and also be fair and take into account the full scope of the pain of his victims. Renata is Crimean Tatar, an indigenous Muslim minority with a long history of Russian oppression. He had a traditional Muslim wedding with Renata which personally meant a lot to her only to then abuse her, her child and her parents, send her father to the hospital with a traumatic head injury, and make claims such as: “I am saving this poor religious girl from a barbaric Muslim over-religious family. She is like a daughter, like a sister to me even more than a wife.” as reported by HSE classmates of Renata’s.

He has used the vulnerability and plea for work and networking connections from students who were victims of Russia’s imperialism, who were affected by poverty and the pandemic to coerce them into sexual acts and romantic relationships, immediately turning their conversations inappropriate when they asked him about job offerings at IPL and assessing homework.

The HSE School of Art and Design also includes many queer students and Dybowski was willfully dismissive of their identities, inclusively treating pre-transition trans men as women who need to be fixed and preying on them.

Abuse is just oppression at a small scale, as with many other cases his abusive views aren’t just reduced to one group (white cishet Russian women and girls). Despite presenting himself as an open-minded supporter of the Russian opposition, he’s a fascist and I hope this isn’t a surprise to anyone. He has given interviews to fascist Russian celebrities like Светов (Svetov) who inclusively is rumored to be a pedophile. Here is one:

It’s extremely concerning that a lot of the fandom is focusing on the amount of artistic participation Dybowski has in IPL when that’s precisely what he would want. I suggest that you re-read Renata’s post and let it sink in, understand every word of hers, every picture, the way Yuriy recoils in discomfort when Dybowski grabs him, the way his mistress and accomplice is noticeably very young, because I get the impression that most people talking about this situation are severely downplaying its gravity. Dybowski knows where Renata and her parents live. He has a gun license. I need everyone to understand that Renata, her child and her relatives are in real mortal danger.

The focus should be on her. Here is another article released by Holod (Холод) on Dec. 24 about her background with comments by other former HSE students: https://holod.media/2024/12/24/sozdatelya-videoigr-obvinili/

Dybowski wants his crimes to be an afterthought, insignificant in the face of his social influence and the supposed intellectual gifts he has to offer the world. He knows his name alone will give him a huge net of support aside from how the law is inherently constructed to protect abusers. This is what complete impunity escalates into.

Sexual abuse isn’t just some awkward flirting and a quick fuck, it’s a threat and a statement of power. It’s a man taking a young wife to pose as a daughter, easy to control and abuse. It’s taking advantage of desperate minorities, of poor people, because they’re easy to threaten and they’re seen as subhuman. It’s abusing neurodivergent people, including those with mental illnesses from prior abuse, because they know they won’t be believed. It’s partners, relatives, children being financially trapped into what is essentially years-long sexual slavery. It’s victims having to go into hiding after speaking out so they and their loved ones don’t get killed. It’s abusers being able to sue their victims for defamation over their accusation and reaping a fortune and social worship from it and then getting the bonus of ruining the victims’ social and professional lives forever. It’s an abuser being wholeheartedly supported by people even when the victims beg to be heard, even after the cat’s out of the bag, with former friends who turn on them still praising their talent and “brilliant minds”. It’s the evidence of dozens of students, so many they themselves have lost count, being considered worthless and them not being able to lay a finger on one man because a rapist’s name is pristine to everyone else. It’s someone being “almost” certain or “not knowing what to believe” even when they see the truth in front of their eyes.

Take it from personal experience: Dybowski DOES NOT love his son. Like all his other victims, Yuriy is a puppet. If it benefits Dybowski, he will kill him as well, and try to twist reality to blame the crime on Renata.

I need you to understand and accept this before making any decision.

OPTIONS FOR ACTION:

Dybowski will not be pressured into even the slightest change. If it’s even possible that he’s fired from IPL, he will not stop there. The only way to keep his victims safe is if he is either [redacted] or imprisoned, ideally for life.

The situation at IPL is, as I said, seriously grim. Dybowski is figuratively making an entire studio hostage and it’s very unlikely that they’ll release a formal statement. If they do, it’ll probably be imposed by Dybowski to make everyone think the situation is solved and dissipate attention. Do not trust authority or PR, trust each other, trust the victims. 

Renata has expressed she won’t start a crowdfunding campaign at the moment since she’s focused on surviving until her divorce proceedings end and is certainly concerned that asking for money will turn the public against her. We should stay attentive to news and guidance from her.

A boycott is still a necessity but as a LAST RESORT. As I’ve relayed and as Renata herself has stressed, the IPL employees are her fellow victims and she pleads that we don’t direct any blame, harm or vitriol towards them. However, Dybowski himself will reap significant social praise, media publicity and wealth from Pathologic 3, which will allow him to persecute his own employees and ex-employees if he so wishes. I doubt they’ll receive residuals for the game’s profits and the IPL members’ survival and safety matters more than any symbolic reward they’ll get from the game’s release which will be meager since Dybowski will once again center all the attention on himself to try to clean his name. Allied to this is the fact that if potential investors see Dybowski’s initiatives keep making money, they will do everything to protect him from consequences, aside from the fact that loss of profit will be the biggest incentive for the currently appointed CEO to take a stance on the situation, especially if we’re clear about our goals of protecting the workers and seeing justice against Dybowski. We stress that a boycott is not a priority because precisely for these reasons we need to put all our focus on bringing Dybowski to justice before he can reap the benefits of Patho 3 and hurt the IPL members and Renata. Taking any longer might be too late. 

Until then, what we can do about this is quietly cancelling all our pre-orders of Pathologic 3 and sharing information about the abuse of IPL workers, standing unconditionally by their side.

THIS CAN BE DONE BY:

- SHARING HIS VICTIMS’ STORIES (RENATA, IPL, HSE), UNCONDITIONALLY STANDING WITH THEM. Now isn’t the time to be impartial. Dybowski’s power is in his words and the social influence he holds. Turning this tactic against him is very important: JUDGES ARE SIGNIFICANTLY INFLUENCED BY PUBLIC OPINION AND MEDIA. I’m already trying to get into contact with YouTubers and will share news as soon as possible. If Dybowski starts to understand he will see consequences for his actions, lack of job opportunities, severed connections, legal consequences, he will grow too afraid to kill. We need to make him fear us. This will make the next steps much easier:

- COLLECTING EVIDENCE. With more social pressure, it’s possible more former IPL members will come forward to share their experiences. You can and should politely comment on the posts of these IPL members with the intent of collecting evidence of Dybowski’s abuses and illegal activities at the studio. Ask them about the studio’s structure, the number of members, if they’ve ever had specific issues with their salary payments, anything you can think of that you think might help. Once again it’s Renata’s express wish that you treat them with kindness and do not harass any of them, even those who’ve remained silent.

- LEGAL ACTION. I appeal to anyone who has knowledge of Russian law to compile a list of Dybowski’s crimes and legally dubious activities, share it and send it to me as well so I can pass it to former HSE and IPL members. I also encourage anyone knowledgeable to open debates about Russian law and the steps necessary to bring Dybowski to justice, so Renata, or for her safety, someone else, will be widely supported and prepared when charging him with these crimes.

What Dybowski wants is for people to believe his power, authority and qualities are insurmountable and not up for debate. Abusers do this a lot or else they wouldn’t be able to keep abusing and this is why the idea that his artistic work has any real value needs to be shattered. Dybowski has lied before. He threatened to sue a former student under a bigger name, HSE or IPL, because he knows that without a world that pampers him he’s just one man. He lies because he knows he won’t get away with the truth. He’s nothing worth pointing out if not a pathetic, deeply cynical loser preaching about his right to dictatorship and we do not need him, neither does IPL. His reputation and life of comfort won’t survive having his victims, subordinates, fans turn on him. Even after all this he’ll switch the narrative and try to make himself small, pitiful, claim the way we treated him was unfair and he only abused people because of his own hardships. Any unhappiness abusers may have is a product of their own actions. They refuse to have meaningful connections because they refuse to see their victims as equals, and that kind of loneliness is nothing compared to the one felt by their victims who they force into extreme isolation.

Coming from a victim of SA, your effort is making someone who hated the world have a bit of hope in it. You can do that again for Renata and all his other victims.

[alilich]

There have been many new Pathologic fans recently who might not be aware of the serious allegations against Nikolay Dybowski, creator and chief writer of the Pathologic game series and founder and CEO of Ice Pick Lodge so it’s crucial to recap all information that’s already been made public about this case:

Dybowski is an alleged child groomer and sexual predator who has abused girls between the ages of 15 and 18 and inclusively used his position as a teacher at HSE University in Moscow, where he’s been employed since 2017, to do so. He has allegedly been targeting teens since 2012. There are also circulating rumors that Dybowski was married to one of his game design students. For the sake of anonymity and safety I will not be posting screenshots of posts made by victims that might be easily tracked down. I will only show screenshots from Dybowski’s responses and will only be recounting what I’ve gathered from personal research and that of other people. All known information on this subject is already widely available on the internet and his victims do not need their identities to be circulated even more than they already have been. I recommend starting with Turaform's YouTube video on the subject since it’s a very comprehensive recap.

These allegations are made by multiple unrelated sources including several alleged victims through tweets, social media posts and chat conversations since at least 2017. They all add up and are only reinforced by Dybowski’s own comments on the situation.

Various sources both for and against Dybowski seem to agree that the HSE Ethics Committee was called to investigate Dybowski in 2019 and has either not found or ignored evidence of his abuse. HSE University has shown on many occasions to accept unethical conduct on the part of professors and directors.

By 2021, these allegations were made more widely known in fan circles outside of Russia and this backlash prompted his fans in Russian forums to double down in defending him, harassing victims and posting accusatory and allegedly racially motivated claims. Eventually, Dybowski himself voiced his own thoughts on Russian social media platform DTF: 

His response to the allegations is, I think, incriminating evidence on its own since it shows he’s acquainted with his accuser and has a strong emotional interest in silencing them and painting them as a vengeful scorned woman archetype. He also does not mention the existing accusations that have been made by many other unrelated people.

At this point Russian student newspaper DOXA contacted one of the victims and posted an article about Dybowski’s case. Shortly after, their office was raided by police. They have been considered an undesirable organization by the Russian government since 2023.

Presumably around this time, Dybowski sent an email to one of his victims claiming that HSE University would be filing a libel suit against her, with him as a witness. Former HSE professor Kirill Martynov commented on the screenshot of this email on Twitter claiming that HSE University is legally unable to file libel suits. From then on, no more details, discussions or updates on these allegations have surfaced.

I want to emphasize that all this time Dybowski’s enjoyed full impunity for all of this. There is no reason to believe he has stopped his abuse of girls and young women since he got out of the situation concluding he will not be punished and will only be socially rewarded for his predatory behavior.

Before we go on to discuss what to do about this, I want to clarify and debunk a common counterpoint that someone could bring up in defense of Dybowski: “The legal age of consent in Russia is 16” 

I want to remind you that Dybowski has allegedly groomed girls since they were 15. More importantly, teenagers from the ages of 15 to 18 years old are not fully developed mentally, physically or emotionally to have a healthy, equal relationship with an adult in his 40s and have a very stark difference in both life experience and emotional maturity, as well as having much less legal protection, social standing and financial means to sustain, protect and defend themselves. That is a fact, regardless of any status of legality that has always been ever-changing depending on the country and time period. Dybowski is an alleged ephebophile regardless of the legality status of such abusive dynamics. There is a reason why grooming (the manipulation of an individual to subconsciously dissensitize and prepare them for later sexual violence) is present in his alleged abuse.

That said:

After Pathologic 3’s announcement something has to be done about this and that’s why I and other fans are strongly appealing to a financial boycott of all Ice Pick Lodge games. 

The biggest counterpoint I’ve seen to this course of action is: “The IPL employees have nothing to do with this, this would have consequences for them too”

First, one of the victims has explicitly stated that the high ranking members of IPL might know of Dybowski’s conduct, and that they know he often attends work while drunk. There is no way of knowing what employees at IPL do or don’t know and it’s irresponsible to definitively assume they’re fully unaware of Dybowski’s actions.

Secondly, all boycotts have consequences for the companies targeted, as that is the intent of a boycott. Boycotts are often called to put a tangible stop to some form of injustice happening within the targeted company, especially from its leaders, whether they’re in creative or executive positions. Dybowski happens to be in both and his case shouldn’t be an exception. If in the face of diminished income Dybowski decides to fire his employees, that will be his choice. His employees will then go on to find another job and hopefully work for a fair, responsible employer that doesn’t attend work drunk and doesn’t molest people, including children. Simply put, we are not responsible for the IPL employees' well-being and payment. Dybowski is. Ask yourself if your primary concern isn’t just getting more Pathologic games while dismissing what the real human cost of that is.

More importantly, Dybowski is known to target children under 17, which means if we were to only focus action on HSE University, that wouldn’t stop him from preying on girls. He’s been employed at HSE since 2017, but his abuse allegedly dates back to at least 2012. The HSE Ethics Committee has proven to be willfully dismissive of its students’ complaints. The writers for DOXA have been censored and their office raided, with members writing in exile as of now. Currently, a financial boycott of the studio that’s Dybowski’s main job and source of income is the only tangible way to have justice and diminish his social and financial power. 

By supporting Pathologic monetarily as well as all other games from Ice Pick Lodge you are providing Dybowski with more social capital to abuse girls without retribution as well as actual capital that he might use to purchase CSEM and defend himself against legal action.

When is it the time to start taking action to support and protect victims, or at the very least to stop actively enabling abusers? If you truly want a piece of fiction to mean something to you personally away from the grasp of an abusive creator, if you're committed to that, then you need to hold the creator accountable. This can’t be allowed to continue. You can’t be complicit in abuse.

I don’t want to be the only one posting about this, so please if you decide to join the boycott, spread the word to other fans, both in posts, tweets and conversation. I allow and encourage you to not only reblog but make your own posts as well. If we do this as a collective effort and follow the rules below we can be more efficient, keep things in relative anonymity and guarantee everyone’s safety, especially that of the victims. 

Rules for the Boycott:

- DO NOT share any information about Dybowski’s victims with anyone. They do not need their identities to be circulated even more than they already have been. Focus on the boycott

- Don’t create a hashtag for this. This should be done through word of mouth and a hashtag will just be a way for us to be easily targeted. Use the common tags like #pathologic, #ice pick lodge, etc and especially #pathologic 3. This will more easily take the boycott effort to the fandom mainstream

- DO NOT post links to piracy websites. Give them away through DMs instead. Posting links will only have piracy websites taken down. 

- DO NOT DELETE any Pathologic or IPL related posts, fan videos or fan art you've posted. This would only raise suspicion and incite backlash from Dybowski's fans and lead to mass harassment and an effort to buy more IPL material to counteract the boycott.

- KEEP MAKING Pathologic posts and use them to share the voices of SA victims. I encourage you to spread awareness about Dybowski’s allegations with every Pathologic post you make. Populating the fandom with people who are educated about sexual violence and are friendly and supportive towards victims is very important.

- DO NOT ENGAGE with internet trolls. The more attention you give the more harassment you'll get. If a rape apologist comments on your posts BLOCK THEM and tell other people who to block. This is also part of the process of making the fandom a kind place for SA victims.

- DON’T HARASS IPL employees or any acquaintances of Dybowski’s. That’s fruitless, creates dangerous precedents and only risks harming innocent people who weren’t aware of the allegations in the process.

[alilich]

he fits so seamlessly everywhere I put him

[alilich]

PSA: Rat Fog Editor patch 1.1.1

Hey! This is news from a month ago that I totally forgot to post -- Rat Fog Editor has been updated. There are no new features in this release, but it fixes an error that caused an incorrect black skybox tile during cloudy days, as well as mislabeled color settings. I'm looking into automatic updates for the 1.2 release, but in the meantime, please get the v1.1.1 program s/t your mods work as intended 😭

[alilich]

plague city, night

[alilich]

She even said that you will "drown the town in blood", "quench the earth's thirst for blood", or "start a bloodshed". That is literally what she said.

On November 8th to 9th, 5pm to 5pm EST, I'm doing my second annual Extra Life charity marathon of Pathologic! I'll (try to) make the Haruspex kill more people than the Sand Plague (shaky estimate is 2,800), while raising money to support real-world childrens' medical care! The route is inspired by similar runs from Ametrinn and indigo-constellation, with the extra stipulation of killing every possible quest NPC. Find me at https://twitch.tv/rathologic for the full 24 hours.

As usual, there are donation incentives and milestone rewards that will apply to the playthrough, mostly by adding custom mods... but I don't have a themed song to sing this year, so the ultimate incentive is that I'll post pinup art of p1 Bad Grief. Donations can get an image of your choice uploaded into a picture frame, change the color of the kerosene lamp, or force me to visit any named NPC. See more details and/or donate at my Extra Life participant page!

Mark your calendars for the 8th and 9th - it helps a lot to have people chatting in the wee hours of the night! I'll be talking about Pathologic, and especially modding, throughout the day (though hopefully not enough to give me laryngitis like last year). Again, this will be streamed on my Twitch :-)

[alilich]

RoSoDude's Reputation, Survival and Disease Overhaul mod v1.0 is out!

RSD's overhaul mod has finally reached its official release! It's by far the most technically complex Pathologic mod yet published, with extensive script edits to introduce mechanics that were never fully implemented by the game. The mod changes various game systems for a challenging and engaging experience, even for first-time players. Some highlights I personally love:

Rebalanced Twyrine Extract brewing with useful recipes

Reputation is no longer restored by killing criminals

Bad Grief will buy those useless patrolman badges

Clothing degrades differently based on how and where you're hit

Kerosene is handy, if not necessary, for looting dark houses

Extensive tweaks to NPC loot, shops, and starting items

It's compatible with every previously published mod on the Nexus, and supports the English, Russian and Polish localizations so far. Check it out! I can't recommend RSD's work enough :-)

[alilich]

slay queen