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:
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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 a few 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. 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 unique 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 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 the most important step.
- 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 CONTACT OR HARASS IPL employees or any acquaintances of Dybowski’s. That’s fruitless, creates dangerous precedents and only risks harming victims and innocent people who weren’t aware of the allegations in the process.
addition with parts of his soon-to-be-ex wife's recent (december 20th 2024) testimony wrt his domestic + familial abuse [her story here] (content warnings for domestic and familial abuse as well as child kidnapping) :
she mentions in the text Dybowksi has (date unmentioned) sold IPL (or what i, from seeing multiple others assume to be IPL from her mention of "his company") :
Я не знаю подробностей продажи его компании, но активные действия начались уже после нашего расставания
"I don't know the details of the sale of his company, but the active steps began after we parted ways."
if it is IPL, this sale likely has an incidence on his position as executive and/or creative lead: you can sell a company and still have parts in it (and as such benefit), or completely leave it in the new director's care, in which case ties can be severed between him and the current team as well as ongoing projects.
ERRATUM/CORRECTION PLEASE READ THAT'S PURELY ON MY ASS TO HAVE ASSUMED FROM RENATA'S ONE SENTENCE + GONE WITH WHAT I'VE BEEN TOLD INSTEAD OF DIGGING thank you for pointing that out to me:
Dybowksi was still discussing P3 as early as one month ago still, and appears to be still on the team either creatively or executively, and likely has been for the time of it. He might indeed have sold the company as per Renata's testimony but be still fully involved, just not The Boss as a legal entity anymore. [video link]
and tldr of renata's testimony, on top of everything describe in the OP, she alleges he physically and psychologically abused her as well as beat her father, purposefully made himself more financially unstable to force her to let him see their son, used financial coercion (child support payment) in order to keep her where he wanted her to live, and attempted to kidnap their son with his mistress when he realized he likely would not be able to see that kid legally after the tribunal's decision.
EDITED tldr dybowski apparently sold IPL some time ago and might or might not still have any creative or executive leadership. He is still on the team as far as a month ago. on top of his long and documented abuse of students, he's a wife-beater, a psychological and financial abuser, and an attempted child kidnapper, as well as a cheater. allegedly.
important rectification on my part, really sorry for having assumed from renata's one sentence and what I had previously been told, added the video link, share this instead ^
sekiro is fun because it has the first souls protag with an established personality and backstory, which allows us to have the first souls protag whose life fucking sucks for reasons completely unrelated to living in a souls game. ashina is beautiful but sekiro lives in his own personal hell. yeah, the fact that he can die from being hit with shit from a butt launched by a giant ape is because hes a souls protag, but he also gets hit by his dad a lot too. he doesnt get yummy estus soup, he has to drink medicine that is explicitly stated to taste and smell bad, and the way he levels them up is by focusing on how shit it tastes and smells. worry not, tho! he can follow it up with delicious handfuls of loose, uncooked rice. he can speak for himself in non-plot essential conversations, which means the player doesnt even have to touch the controller for him to fumble a bad bitch! literally the first npc conversation you can overhear is people calling him pathetic. the game starts with him #girlrotting in a hole he could easily escape but doesnt care enough to do so. hes an orphan of war. his adoptive dad tried to kill him. truly he was born in a wet cardboard box all alone
“male loneliness epidemic” and “friendzoning” are similar concepts to me in that the conditions they describe are literally experienced by everyone at some point in their lives but when its men its some sort of profound injustice that needs to be rectified by checks notes giving them unfettered access to the public good that is Women
"Marika becomes the sum of all the Fromsoft girlies" is nice but you forgot Nashandra who actually has parallels with Marika! Recommending to check it out, she's cool!
let’s get this out of the way now… I love DS2, I think the vibe and gameplay is immaculate and I’ll defend it as a whimsical and enjoyable videogame experience till the end of time.
But my god, I hate how they handle female characters in that one 💀
In fact, I don’t like how they handle female characters in DS franchise in general. It got a bit better in Bloodborne and Sekiro and especially AC6, but overall ever since I started playing Fromsoft game in 2020, my main gripe with them is they only have 2 tropes to shoehorn their female character into: helpless victim of a system that would mangle and exploit them OR serious sword lady. And if I’m being real, it’s the main gripe I have with Elden Ring base game too?
I didn’t discuss it on tumblr because back then I were still trying to keep this blog art-focused, but when the game came out in 2022, I did express my concern on twitter that I found the female characters cast… strangely lacking. Because I went into the game expecting Ema-level of writing (literally Sekiro’s Ema is one of the best female characters Fromsoft has ever written to this day I could and have talked ppl’s ears off about her. And I’m glad she on her own is very different from Marika. That means they could at least write 2 more types of female characters now the bar is on the floor but I’ll take it and cherish what I have), but it felt like they got reset back to DS franchise with ER base game.
(This has an added layer of me being a girl born, raised and lived in a Sinosphere country that is entrenched in Confucius values just like Japan, so yes I do understand and experience firsthand the underlying culture values that shapes their writing. Hell, I live and study postgraduate in Japan for 2 years too).
But we are going off track, this is about DS2. Now, my problem with DS2 is, see, with 1 or 3, the female characters either have very little agency or no agency at all. And it just…. be like that. The male characters are somewhat the same, so it really doesn’t bother me that much. The cool, unique, not sexualized design is enough. But 2?
2 has a lot of female characters…. who either play no role in the world setting or sinister figures that charm men and bring ruins to kingdoms? What?
(Before anyone says “but Lucatiel—” Lucatiel is the beacon of light in that game, yes, but at the same time her purpose centering around her brother is… also a problem I have with the way they handle Malenia’s story. My Fromsoft experience has lore to it as well jfc)
Like, it’s just ??? to me half of those women have no agency or backstory whatsoever apart from being the Dark’s daughters that would bring doom everywhere they go??? You can say everything wrong in DS2 world is their fault and I actually wouldn’t have much to argue. Actually, it’s interesting you bring up Nashandra because I do think Nashandra has parallel in Elden Ring. But not to Marika.
Nanaya.
That’s who reminds me of Nashandra in Elden Ring. Literally the mysterious, lowkey nefarious lady and her old man husband with questionable dynamic DS2 trope 🧍♀️ you can actually see that in their name too.
If I have to pick a character in DS franchise specifically to make parallel to Marika, it’ll always be Gwynevere. Because I honestly think it’s amazing they took a character that has the least amount of agency they’ve ever created, and turned the core concept of her (warmth, healing spells, sunlight, mother, daughter, queen, faith) into another character with actual good writing.
That’s why I didn’t include Nashandra in my previous post. Not because I don’t know about her. It’s because I know.
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