Ice-Pick Lodge founder Nikolay Dybowski departs Pathologic dev

Nikolay Dybowski, the founder and studio creative director of Ice-Pick Lodge, has left the studio.

In a statement, the Russian developer said Dybowski chose to leave to “focus on personal projects and his private life.” In recent months, Pathologic players unearthed allegations accusing Dybowski of kidnapping and abuse, some of which date back to 2021.

Dybowski founded Ice-Pick in 2002, and has been a guiding creative force on most of its games since. Along with the two Pathologic games and the upcoming Pathologic 3, he directed 2013’s Knock-Knock.

Aleksey Luchin, a former Ice-Pick developer, later commented on the allegations and claimed Dybowski’s behavior was an “open secret” at the studio. He described Dybowski as a “manipulative sociopath that is very good with words.”

“I believe the best path for Nikolay would be to leave Ice-Pick Lodge to not tarnish their reputation with his own fuckups,” wrote Luchin months ago, “and leave the current studio to work as is.”

According to Ice-Pick, Dybowski’s responsibilities have been reassigned to different team leads “over the past few months.” It also stressed studio heads Peter Potapov and Ayrat Zakirov remain, and continue to be “pillars of Pathologic 3’s development.”