alilich

[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

[alilich]

Happy Pathologic 3! Looks like some recent changes in logistics have skewed IPL towards releasing a sequel to a sequel instead of a DLC to a sequel - so here's a throwback to when we still were expecting Pathologic 2: Bachelor. And with a new publisher for the third game, I wonder if that's who this pitch was originally intended for.

the bachelor pitch website, recreated

this official website with a pitch for bachelor route was found on jan 2nd and then promptly sniped by IPL, without us getting a good wayback machine copy. i've been working on restoring it, and at this point i think it's rather faithful to the original and worthy sharing!

not perfect YET - namely, the mobile version kinda sucks, - but i'll be looking to improve it over the upcoming weekend! (more info under the cut)

some liberties have been taken in developing this page:

first of all, all source code has purged, and the website was rewritten from scratch - this is to avoid copyright conflict with readymag, the website builder IPL used. such services often allow exporting code, but only limit it to business clients and usually forbid editing the exported code in any way

the mobile version seemingly wasn't a thing that IPL considered with this single-page pitch/"business card" kinda website, but i'll still try to get it to work - my main goal is to ensure all assets load in a harmonic way, while IPL's original website was skipping some of them on mobile

unused assets/disabled elements were not restored. i honestly don't really want to tangle through readymag's messy messy ripped code to find out how were they supposed to look like. also, all of them are developer portraits with their names and contact information, and i don't know which of these people are public personas and which arent :^)

a little "about this page" button was added, including my contacts for incase anyone wants to tell me anything important, or (HOPEFULLY NOT) IPL will have problems with this website being present and would like to ask me to remove it

the chosen by IPL fonts were restored - i'm not sure if the saved .html file that i possess didn't preserve them, or were the fonts simply failed to load on some platforms..? either way...

AND ALSO, if you happen to have screenshots of the PC version, feel free to DM me, and i'll be happy to tweak the layout for better historical correctness!

FINALLY, currently i'm using for reference a saved .html shared by abyssal + screenshots shared by lillia, both on pathomodding discord - so thanks a lot to them because otherwise i would definitely not have enough patience for this project lol!

[alilich]

p2 bachelor route finally drops and it's a clash of clans-style freemium turn based mobile game

[alilich]

VFS Explorer v1.1a is out!

VFS Explorer is a graphic tool for viewing and extracting files and subfolders from within VFS archives, which are used in Pathologic 1.

Update v1.1 adds new search modes ("Contains", "Starts with" and "Regex"); Russian interface and multilanguage support; checking for new versions from within the app; better errors; and hides debug options by default (enable them back in Preferences).

Update v1.1a fixes a critical error on systems using languages that VFS Explorer is not translated to.

As bundling multiple languages is now possible, VFSE accepts submissions of new localizations. If you'd like to contribute, see Developer documentation, and feel free to message me with any questions!

Download from Github or Nexusmods (for Windows or Linux)

[alilich]

Hi! Sorry about this, please give a try to update v1.1a and let me know if it works. You can get v1.1a from the Github link in the original post, and it will appear on Nexusmods in a couple minutes as well.

VFS Explorer v1.1 is out!

VFS Explorer is a graphic tool for viewing and extracting files and subfolders from within VFS archives, which are used in Pathologic 1.

Update v1.1 adds new search modes ("Contains", "Starts with" and "Regex"); Russian interface and multilanguage support; checking for new versions from within the app; better errors; and hides debug options by default (enable them back in Preferences).

As bundling multiple languages is now possible, VFSE accepts submissions of new localizations. If you'd like to contribute, see Developer documentation, and feel free to message me with any questions!

Download from Github or Nexusmods (for Windows or Linux)

[alilich]

VFS Explorer v1.1a is out!

VFS Explorer is a graphic tool for viewing and extracting files and subfolders from within VFS archives, which are used in Pathologic 1.

Update v1.1 adds new search modes ("Contains", "Starts with" and "Regex"); Russian interface and multilanguage support; checking for new versions from within the app; better errors; and hides debug options by default (enable them back in Preferences).

Update v1.1a fixes a critical error on systems using languages that VFS Explorer is not translated to.

As bundling multiple languages is now possible, VFSE accepts submissions of new localizations. If you'd like to contribute, see Developer documentation, and feel free to message me with any questions!

Download from Github or Nexusmods (for Windows or Linux)

[alilich]

dark clouds roll over the steppe, inclement weather ahead

[alilich]

Rat Fog Editor: update 1.1

Rat Fog Editor, the graphical tool for modding Pathologic's weather.bin script file, has been updated to v1.1. This release isn't big in terms of new functionality, but offers some quality of life fixes:

Opened files can be overwritten in-place

"weather.bin" is automatically targeted when opening a file

Templates for the 2005/2015 or 2004 Alpha formats can be loaded from the user interface

If you've ever wanted to change the fog color, render distance, or skybox display time periods of patho1, it's technically never been easier. Download Rat Fog Editor here!

[alilich]

expecting to release vfs explorer v1.1 sometime this week! in the meanwhile, How Its Started vs How Its Going

[alilich]

Aid for the Alanqar family

Help Mohammed, Enas, and children Layan, Sara, Adam, and two month old Amir - to leave Gaza. #174 on El-Shab-Hussein's Google doc

€49k / €58k !

So, my dear followers:

Message me with proof of a donation to the Alanqar's campaign and I'll make you a little color palette or a custom digital paintbrush:

Plus, your name will be put into a raffle for a digital painting commission; drawing to be held on 10/15/24!

🍉🍉🍉🍉🍉🍉🍉🍉🍉🍉🍉🍉🍉🍉🍉🍉🍉🍉🍉🍉🍉🍉

[alilich]

good day everybody steam now allows you to download demos to your library even if you already own the game. which means if you already own pathologic 2 but did not get the old marble nest demo first, you can now do so by pasting steam://install/607730 into your browser

it will ask to open steam, and proceed to download the de-listed demo :) its available in both russian and english, through steam settings.

tada! no longer need to jump through hoops and external downloads