Lab Zero CEO Peter Bartholow, also known as Ravidrath on the SRK forums, recently posted about their plans to crowd-source funding for Skullgirls DLC. It appears as if Squigly herself will be partially crowd-funded. He also detailed how she will be made available to Skullgirls players, which is rather unconventional for fighting game DLC.

When she comes out she’ll be free for a limited time for everyone, and after three months or so, her price will go up to $5. This is to add a “ticking clock” element to it and try to minimize possible freeloaders, and encourage people to pay $5 now [to the crowdfunding drive] if they were planning on doing it the “normal” way.

He went on to explain why they are choosing to distribute her for free.

The “free for everyone” bit is actually because this method is a lot cheaper than the alternative. Sony and MS charge for codes, and it would be really expensive to buy them for everyone and distribute them. So this is a good way to work around that, and also hopefully get more people interested in the game, too.

Though exact details and goals on the Skullgirls crowd-funding drive are not yet available Pete did tease us with a few of the planned rewards including opportunities to test characters still in development and…

We’re still finalizing the rewards, but I can say that we’ll have PC codes w/ beta access for one of the tiers. I think people should be excited about, since it means they’ll get to playtest characters in development and provide feedback, something that… really doesn’t happen outside of Japan? Or even inside of Japan, unless you’re Daigo or something. And… The first stretch goal is a male character.

Testosterone? In my Skullgirls! How can this be!? Looks like we might be getting Panzerfaust or Big Band sooner than we all thought.

Peter also said that the team will have a “floating goal” somewhere between stretch goals, but that it’s “a lot less than a full character.”

Source: SRK Forums