In a sudden move from Konami, even unbeknownst to Mike Z and the rest of the Skullgirls development team themselves, Skullgirls is set to be delisted from the Playstation Network on December 17th, and from Xbox Live Arcade on December 31st.

Mike Z explains in a stream archive you can find after the jump exactly what this means for players who currently enjoy Skullgirls, and what the team is doing to make sure that the game stays alive through a different publisher.

Reportedly, the Japanese version, which was not published by Konami, is safe from being delisted, as well as the PC version which should remain on Steam with no issue.

Hit the jump for the embedded stream archive to hear what Mike Z had to say.

Mike Z begins discussing the issues at around the 7:20 mark, starting it off with a Final Fantasy 6 (awesome game) analogy to explain the problems the game is currently facing.

While this may come as a shock to most readers, it seems to have come as a shock to the developers as well. We hope that Lab Zero Games can resolve the issues currently circling around Skullgirls, and that the game will not be impacted further from these kinds of problems.

You can find the stream here

Apparently Konami is making money with Skullgirls on consoles so why are they going remove it ?

I guess success is relative for crappy japanese companies. In the same way Eidos games made lots of money but were considered failures by SE because the devs werent Japanese.

Huh, that fucking sucks if it pans out.

Poor Mike, they finally caught a break with the indiegogo campaign and now this. Doesn't sound like the end of the world for them but still baffling.

@ryanwhom: You mean success is relative based on budget, publisher investment and projected earnings? Well golly day! Those durn Japanese....

Selling copies doesn't necessarily mean they are making money; I'm sure Konami has a reason for doing this beyond being a bunch of dicks and the only thing that makes sense is that they are losing money here.

It'll be interesting to find out whether you'll be able to download the game if you bought it previously after it's taken down; that would be a real shitstorm if that happened.

@kidavenger: According to this Neogaf thread http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=730135

Note that, if you purchase the game before it is de-listed, you are still able to access the game freely through your PSN/XBL account download history.

Is there a cost to have the games being kept listed on the two platforms? If not, what is the benefit of having the game delisted?

Ok, after reading that gaf post they said they ceased relations with Konami and now they're getting Skullgirls delisted. So Konami is just being a dick.

Wait, wait. Why? I mean how do you lose money from offering a game on PSN/XBL? (I assume Sony/MS hosts the games)

Whaaaat lame

I know with Sony you have to pay a certain amount (cant remember what it was though).

@towersixteen: To be fair Konami has been shit for years now, but yeah, that comment was pretty ignorant.

Glad I picked it up just for support but fuuuuuck this sucks.

@ryanwhom:

While it's fucked up that they considered Deus Ex a failure, it was because they didn't make the big bucks they expected. Not due to some ridiculous racial problem, and you're just coming off as ignorant here.

Reading up on everything about this whole thing, I can't help but initially think this is out of hubris, not a rational business decision made by Konami.

If that's the case, then yep, that would sound about right coming from them..

Is there a maintenance cost to keep the games listed?