"Guilty Gear" developer Arc System Works, along with community developer Team French CaliBurst, Lab Zero Games, which was developing the GGPO rollback netcode patch for "Guilty Gear Exegesis: Accent Core Plus R" Founder Mike Zaimont confirmed that he has been suspended from the project.

"Arc System Works has now agreed with Team French CaliBurst to suspend MikeZ's participation in development until the outstanding issues are addressed," Takeshi Yamanaka of Arc System Works told Gamasutra.

These "unresolved issues" include the allegations made against Zaimont by a former Lab Zero employee that he "frequently mentions genitalia, forces unwanted physical contact, makes sexual remarks about his own or an employee's body, insults co-workers privately or openly in front of other co-workers, Multiple allegations of inappropriate and abusive behavior, including "using highly personal details to threaten or humiliate co-workers."

Following an internal investigation into Zaimont's conduct, several employees resigned from the studio in August, and in early September Zaimont terminated the remaining employees.

Arc System Works and Team French CaliBurst were apparently aware of these allegations, and Yamanaka stated that shortly after Lab Zero was effectively shut down, Zaimont was contracted to produce patches on the assumption that he would "eventually resolve the allegations against him."

"Arc System Works has a strong policy of not tolerating any misconduct, harassment, acts of violence, or discrimination in any style or form," Yamanaka said, but that policy did not work very well against his desire to get the GGPO update done He admitted that it did not work well against his desire to get the GGPO update done.

"(Zaimont's agreement) was decided on the basis of providing the best service to our users and putting them first, and in the ultimate interest of the fans waiting for the GGPO update, we have chosen to overlook certain aspects of our harassment policy We express our utmost regret that We expect MikeZ to resolve the allegations against him in good faith." Now that the development has reached a milestone, and with your (urging), we thought it was a good time for MikeZ to begin working toward a resolution."

GGPO is middleware aimed at eliminating lag in fighting games through rollback netcode: instead of waiting for remote player input to happen, it predicts it, and if the prediction turns out to be incorrect, it rolls back the game state and updates the corrected to continue. The idea is that if the predictions are correct most of the time, overall game play will be smooth and relatively lag-free.

The Guilty Gear XX Accent Core Plus R GGPO open beta test is currently underway and will run through November 2.