A Skullgirls’ Valentine redesign is coming, as announced by developer Hidden Variable.

Cross instances on Valentine’s character will be removed and replaced by a shuriken instead. Only her pupils will retain any hints of crosses to her design.

Valentine will also will be getting a slight color changes, appearing a different shade of pink. These changes will be adapted onto both her official artwork in artbook sections as well as her gameplay sprites. They also state that changes to designs to Ileum and The Last Hope will also be made to remove references to crosses.

Now what would be the reason for this change, one might ask? According to the reasoning given by the Skullgirls developer, there are two main ones.

The first being their original change to her to avoid issues with Red Cross, as they “hastily updated” her into her current fuchsia color scheme. The second is in regard to Skullgirls’ growth in popularity, giving them more “opportunities”, and putting them in a position to make the change with the care and effort it deserves.

The latter part could be in reference to that certain regions have restrictions on what is allowed to be shown in content. Meaning that imagery of crosses may be removed due to some religious laws or restrictions.

This wouldn’t be the first time the company has change artwork. Obviously they state the earlier changes they made to Valentine back then to avoid legal trouble with the Red Cross.

However, the game has also been known to censor spritework during gameplay to hide away panties when they originally did appear during certain moves or when characters were knocked down.

It’s not stated when all changes will be made, but they do note that in the future every frame of Valentine animation in Skullgirls Mobile and Skullgirls 2nd Encore will be updated with the new design. So that would be something fans should look out for moving through 2022.

Skullgirls 2nd Encore is currently available for Windows PC (via Steam), Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, and smartphones – an Xbox One port was planned but has been “postponed indefinitely.” Most recently they have announced a season pass with two characters since released for it.