 Lab Zero had developed a fighting game engine, named Z-Engine, from scratch for their own title.While others had contacted Lab Zero to use the Z-Engine for other fighting games, the studio was drawn to the work of the Mane6 who, according to Lab Zero's Mike Zaimont, had shown a high degree of competence of what made a good fighting game compared to other efforts, and wanted to support their work.Lab Zero used an Indiegogo crowd-sourcing effort to gain development funds, and having readily cleared their initial target of $150,000 and with additional stretch goals of new characters and content for their game, included a $725,000 target that would allow Mane6 to use and distribute the Z-Engine for free as part of their new game, and challenged the brony community to help towards that via online donation.