Mike Zaimont is known to be an outspoken individual in the fighting game community. However, it's not his fighting game hot takes that have riled people up this time. Instead, it's an insensitive joke he told during a Skullgirls tournament being streamed on Twitch.
The incident took place partway through Once More Once!, an online tournament for Skullgirls — a game that Zaimont is the programmer and lead designer for. He was acting as a commentator for most of the tournament's runtime. It was during this live commentary that he attempted to make a topical "joke."
During one round, another commentator describes the ongoing gameplay as "suffocating," in reference to how one-sided the match was at that moment. Zaimont then replies with "Would it be fair to say that you can't breathe?" It's a tasteless joke based on "I can't breathe," the final words uttered by George Floyd as he was held down by police with a knee on his neck. The words have since become a slogan repeated by Black Lives Matter protesters as a reminder of the excessive use of force used on Floyd.
There was a noticeable amount of silence after the joke was told, as the match continues for 13 seconds without commentary. Zaimont's attempts to play it off after the fact didn't work. Later on he says that he was trying to bring light to the BLM movement rather than make fun of it, though this explanation did little to subside the growing anger directed at him from the fighting game community.
A few hours later, Zaimont apologised in a TwitLonger. Stating that he's "wholeheartedly sorry for making a much-too-soon comment that was definitely in poor taste," he goes on to say this incident doesn't represent his views "on racial equality or on the systemic injustice present in the United States."
Sharpie, one of the main commentators for the tournament and the one Zaimont joked to, also tweeted that Mike has apologised to her personally, following up with a second tweet saying that "the clip does nothing but make the entire skullgirls community look bad."
Source: Twitch
