A Medium post by a co-founder of studio Disco Elysium and art collective ZA/UM raised eyebrows over the weekend by suggesting that many of the key creative leads behind the game have left the company. Now, three of those executives have confirmed that they no longer work at the acclaimed developer, leaving fans to wonder what exactly happened.
The three employees in question are lead writer and designer Robert Kurvitz, lead artist Aleksander Rostov, and writer Helen Hindpere. The Medium post in question, written by Martin Luiga–a founding member of ZA/UM and editor at Disco Elysium–announced the dissolution of ZA/UM as an art collective, as well as the departures of Kurvitz, Rostov, and Hindpere.
In the post, Luiga states that the executives left the company sometime near the end of 2021 and that their departure from the company was “involuntary.” He also says this means “bad news” for fans waiting for a Disco Elysium sequel. The three creatives confirmed they no longer work for the company via tweets from Rostov’s account. In a comment on the post, Luiga appears to point to the original investors in the game as the source of the disagreement, comparing them to “a kleptomaniac who manipulates dozens of people to steal from themselves.”
We confirm that we are no longer in the studio.
— Aleksander Rostov, Robert Kurvitz, Helen Hindpere— Aleksander Rostov (@artofrostov) October 2, 2022
After news of the departures broke, ZA/UM (the studio) sent the following statement to IGN:
“Like any video game, the development of Disco Elysium has been and continues to be a collaborative effort, with each team member’s input essential and valued as part of a larger whole. At this time, we have no further comment to make other than The ZA/UM creative team’s focus remains on developing our next project, and we’re excited to share more news about it with you soon.”
All in all, this is a messy situation that we may never know the full details of. In a subsequent tweet, Luiga said that fans may have reason to be optimistic and that the sequel may be just fine. However, since these three executives represent a large portion of the talent that went into Disco Elysium–including Kurvitz, who first explained the game’s setting in the novel Sacred and Terrible Air–it’s unclear how that might affect development. of a sequel or sequel to what is widely regarded as one of the greatest RPGs of all time. In fact, it got a rare 10/10 score from us here at GameSpot.
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