Skullgirls adds bonus stage, cancels TF2 hat reward

The crowdfunding effort for indie fighter Skullgirls is still going great guns, with Lab Zero Games able to add a bonus stage to the mix - but drawing back from a promise to deliver a Team Fortress 2 hat.

In a couple of rapid-fire updates to the project's IndieGoGo page, Lab Zero CEO Peter Bartholow said response to a new $150 "Patron" contributor tier has been "nothing short of amazing" and as a reward to all backers, the team will add a new bonus stage.

The River King Casino stage is a separate level to those mentioned in other stretch goals, and is not tied to a specific character or story extension.

Unfortunately this good news foreshadowed something of a disappointment; the team had touted the idea of adding a Skullgirls hat to Team Fortress 2 as part of its promotional efforts, but wide reporting of this may have been a little pre-emptive.

"We announced on a recent stream that we intended to make TF2 hats, thinking that didn’t count as 100% confirmation. People were excited and the story took on a life of its own, and we felt it would be hard to go back on that. Given that there were a handful of recent and upcoming releases that featured promotional hats, we took a chance and included it in the campaign," Bartholow said,

"At the time we felt confident that getting approval would not be a problem, but obviously we were wrong."

Bartholow said Valve has communicated that the Team Fortress 2 team "just doesn’t have the cycles to accommodate the Skullgirls TF2 hat".

"We haven’t given up – since the PC version and beta are still a few months away, we are currently investigating to see if the Team Fortress 2 team will have an opening in their schedule between now and then to see if we can salvage this.

"We’re also simultaneously investigating alternative digital items to replace the Leviathan hat, and hope we’ll be able find something as desirable if not more so. Of course, in the interest of not repeating the same mistake, we won’t discuss what those items are quite yet."

Contributors at the $30 tier and higher will receive any and all digital items selected to replace the TF2 hat, regardless of whether they were announced at the time of pledging. Lab Zero apologised and said it had no intention to mislead. Disappointed backers are encouraged to contact support@indiegogo.com to have their contribution refunded.

Thanks, Siliconera.