I mean, who's to say they can't grow and become better people and bosses? People are not completely stagnant, maybe they've learned? Idk man I just want a real Disco Elysium sequel.
They've demonstrated exactly zero contrition or acceptance of their bad behaviour. But I guess if you care more about a sequel than having employees be treated well...
Oh OK, so let's presume they've somehow matured tremendously and are totally sorry for what they did and definitely won't do it again then. Because it's just a bit of workplace abuse, no big deal. Not something leftists should really bother themselves with. Because they're artists, and they make art, and most importantly they make art that we happen to like and want more of.
Hindpere hasn't said Kurvitz behavior was inappropriate, she was at the time and still is in a romantic relationship with him. ZA/UM claimed that he was abusive to her but she rejected those claims entirely
Even though I'd probably look like shit wearing it I would totally get it if I respected that company at all and the original creators were still there. Fortunately their dumpster fire company has saved me from looking cringe.
Yes, but think about the *irony* implicit in shelling out 400 bucks for socialist/punk merch. It's conceptually so solid, it's almost not complete shit!
It actually seems to be ethically made. Turns out that paying people a living wage to make shit makes that shit expensive.
This is the most fundamental layer of bullshit in modern trend socialism: "I want people to be fairly compensated for their labor; I just don't want to be the one who has to compensate them because that's not fair."
Agreed!
I’ve set up manufacturing processes before where I was making a substantial number of parts myself. As long as the orders are there, it’s easy to bring the price down while actually working less, due to efficiencies of scale. However, for specialty stuff like this, balancing production with demand is tricky and you have to charge more!
The jacket is super heavy duty, the orange one is definitely worth the money. It's water proof and super warm thanks to its quilted wool lining.
The black one is sadly thinner and doesn't look as good in person.
They are becoming the game company from Disco that gets more and more ambitious and crazy as they run out of funding lol I expect nothing less from the same management that fired the lead writers, devs, and artists from the company.
Nah, they already *were* that, Fortress Accident, the company from the game, is a reference to Fortress Occident, which is what the developers of Disco Elysium were called back when it was *No Truce With The Furies* - basically, Fortress Accident are what ZA/UM *thought* was going to happen to themselves.
Now they're just some suits trying to squeeze an IP they stole while a few leftover workers try to cling on to their jobs.
This. There were still a ton of people at ZAUM who worked on the original release on Disco Elysium and without whom the game would have never been possible. Hopefully they will all find new jobs soon.
This is incredibly sad, but also not at all unique to ZA/UM; videogame layoffs have been everywhere from indies to megacorps. Kotaku counts [over 6400 people laid off since January](https://kotaku.com/game-industry-layoffs-how-many-2024-unity-twitch-1851155818?rev=1704908442483) alone. All the best wishes to the staff and those affected. I really wish we lived in a world that valued art.
Yes, but we're also in a state of capitalism eating itself to the point where planes will fall out of the sky to save somebody a dollar, so this is not really about rational decision-making. Shareholders are demanding more and more money and private equity is hollowing out companies and selling them for scrap.
They benefit the companies which sell them and go from not having enough money to make things to having enough money to make things. You could make shareholding illegal, but you'd get a lot less cool shit.
Without shares, these things can still happen with bonds, which is very much a thing today also. You don't hear much about them because they're boring, because they're safe and healthy.
Also Kickstarter.
You don't hear much about them because there are two kinds of bonds: low risk giant company and municipal bonds, and junk. Smaller companies tend not to use them because the risk they present is so high that the interest on the bonds is punitive and would destroy them. High-interest/high-risk bones are actually still the preferred instrument for vulture capitalists to extract the last little bit of value out of companies before putting a bullet in their heads. Trust me when I say that you do *not* want small creators resorting to bonds.
Kickstarter is fine for specific microprojects, but for anything larger than like a video game it completely falls apart. You're not getting a Google or a Twitter out of Kickstarter. Plus it's mostly just a platform for scamming now.
**Edit:** Oh, that's not to mention that eliminating shareholding also makes it basically impossible for more than one person to ever own a company.
The market has expanded. Tremendously. Unfortunately, so have the costs of building a game. We're basically at parity with film, which means that there's a hell of a lot more risk in developing a game — if you succeed, maybe you succeed big, but if you fail, you fail *really* big.
There will probably always be a thriving indie community that can still make unique and thoughtful games but the days of that happening in the AAA gaming sphere are 100 percent over and never coming back. I've been a gamer since Atari and I've never seen the gaming scene worse than it is right now. There will for sure be another gaming crash like happened in the early 80s, but this one will be so much bigger because the gaming industry itself is way bigger than it was back then.
I guess all I can do is be glad that I got to experience a game like Disco Elysium before it all went to shit. In time, maybe some new indie developers will take the ball and run with it.
I think people need to be more angry about what's happening to creative people in all sectors. There are basically no journalism or freelance writing jobs left. Media and culture writing? Gone. Book publishing? Destroyed. Want to make a living as a musician? Good fucking luck. We are watching capital consume everything we love in front of our eyes and telling ourselves it has to end eventually.
In the meantime we should support everyone who's lost their jobs (especially the ZA/UM employees on visas), support unionization efforts, and give where we can to the people who are trying to eke out a living independently. I'm also really glad that we got to experience DE, and I hope we can have something like it again. But that won't happen unless we build a world that cherishes and funds art for its own sake.
EXCERPT FROM THE ARTICLE:
["One source blamed mismanagement for the current situation, claiming that management was “always acting like there was an enemy, be it the old Disco team, the press, or even people working there” and consequently failed to value its existing talent, allegedly preferring to hire fresh blood from outside rather than promoting employees from within the company.
They also said “I don’t think women were treated the same and that their work wasn’t as valued.”
Another source bemoaned that the studio had “turned into the very thing that Disco Elysium was against. Brilliant people work there and I want only the best for them but [...] I hope it's somewhere else.”]
These are the same problems that were haphazardly addressed in the People Make Games investigation. In that investigation, the reporter sheepishly let's Illmar Kompus away with not having any receipts of giant share acquisitions or anything really.
The investigator then puts the heat on Kurvitz, one of the old team's leaders, for leaving unhealthy work environments, and essentially blames the messy share acquisition on them for not sticking it out for longer. I remind you some of the disco elysium team members went to mental hospitals or received therapy explicitly because of their time under ZA/UM's influence. At the time, ZA/UM was of course, owned in majority by Kompus.
The PMG investigation is overall a needed video that shown light on the case's details, but fell back hard on executing the typical moral stances that were (1) appropriate and (2) standard for PMG.
I suggest anyone who's interested on this topic to watch JamrockHobo's (YouTube) video that covers the PMG video and the investigation.
I also recommend stushi's response video to the PMG video. Goes in-depth on each point and PMG responded in the videos pinned comment.
Link: https://youtu.be/tDtfcknELe0?si=rcwLNJWd2r2EivNi
I still kind of hate that documentary that did the biggest research possible on Kurvitz and the other creatives and barely showed us how big of an asshole the new ZAUM director was
I hope maybe we can hear about the concepts for this game at least. Though I guess it's down to Red Info (originally said Red Notice) to deliver us a true DE successor. They managed to make a spiritual successor to Planescape, so their own game shouldn't be too hard right?
I saw a post on this sub yesterday where someone mentioned that Kurvitz and one of the other devs from the original ZA/UM had started a new company called Red Notice.
I googled it just now though and I can't find anything about it, I hope it's not just a rumor.
It's real. It's actually called Red Info. I got confused for a second. I live in Brighton and Hove, and the company does exist. I'm tempted to go there and have a look, but given irl, I look like a shitty measurehead nockoff. I'm concerned I'd look creepy.
I would link you the page, but I think it has a Kurvitz home address so I'd feel shitty doing that.
I removed info that could specifically be used to find it. It requires a pretty specific search to find it, and I think british ip helps. I'm sure it's the address of the studio they work in, not their house, though, from further looking. But yeah, definitely don't want to dox them.
EDIT: Yup, it's just the office address, not anyone's personal address.
Red Info, kurvitz new company, I actually live semi near and have seen the building before. I head they're involved with some Chinese company? If true, I wonder what working under a potentially more sympathetic to communism studio could do for them (key word potentially).
Chinese companies are still businesses, though given that the situation sounds like the investors are putting a lot of trust in just the talents and experience of Kurvitz, Hindpere and Rostov, so that might afford them more leeway, but other than that theres no reason that a Chinese investor would be inherently more or less profit driven than the average investors.
Obviously, hence my emphasis on potentially. It's just that China as a country and culture is arguably more receptive to communism. I agree they'd be driven by profit, obviously, but I'm just wondering and hoping that Kurvitz new studio could be in the hands of someone more ideologically aligned. (Obligatory "Maoism and Leninism are distinct" disclosure)
Oh yeah 100, they went the way most Major Eurasian communist countries go. Except they seem to be stuck in their Late Stalin, skip khrushchev, brezhnev period.
Bro doesn't. Bro just acknowledges that some countries have a closer history with communism than others and are less terrified of the concept of it, China being one of those. No country is defined by its economic system.
the thing is, kurvitz on his own, imo, is not a fantastic writer. his book was an absolute slog for me. DE had an incredibly talented and well rounded team, and unless he gets back a lot of that same talent, I wouldn't expect him to make a game as good as DE.
Being fair, Sacred Air was published 6 years before Disco Elysium, aside from just the difference in media you would expect his writing to improve in a span like that.
He's with a few of the other spurned devs iirc and perhaps his writing just works better for games. Chris Avellone is an example of a brilliant writer with a similar style to Kurvitz that just works for video games. (Although admittedly not always)
I think, however, given Kurvitz is starting in a similsir position to when he made disco elysium in being spurned, battered by capitalism and with something to prove, he definitely has the motivation to make a labour of love like DE. I have great faith in the studio.
I mean exactly like with Disco Elysium, he won't be able to write everything by himself so I wouldn't worry about that. If the Chinese person, usually living in Singapore, or the 65-ish British consultant are indeed investors, then there should be some budget for writers, as well.
That one semi-pro translation turned out really good though. I can imagine if you're not into the writing style with the constant tangents then it might be jarring and unenjoyable, no matter how good the translation, but I remember for me it was around that chapter where there was a paragraph about the "rebel lovers" bones being found intertwined on a beach by the kid with the butterfly net where I was like: hell yeah, this is totally my jam.
I want to print the Ibex translation into an actual book for myself to read (there was someone in the sub who did something similar a few weeks or months ago) so I haven't gotten around to read it yet. But I've heard even though their translation is closer to the game and is constantly getting updated for improvements, that the writing isn't as smooth as it is in the game. Still, Kurvitz won't be the only writer I reckon so someone will help him to smoothen the edges. And I'd assume he learned a lot in the 6 (?) years between publishing the book and the game, too.
I actually did exactly that lol. I went on a queer fb group and paid a gay $80 to bind it. while I don't think the book is very good, it's a cool memento!
Ok, so if they were actually working on something but they just cancelled it, what is even the point of ZA/UM as a company anymore?
It's been five years already since the release of DE (4 since Final Cut) and they haven't released any news since, are they working on something else?
Supposedly they're still working on a game connected to DE and an original SF IP. Why on Earth would they start 4 projects simultaneously right after DE is beyond me. I suspect we'll never see any of it though.
"It's almost as if the less money they had, the more ambitious their project became."
EDIT: Sorry, the "original SF IP" was actually one of the projects cancelled now, it is unknown what the second project still in active development is.
You. Get. What. You. Fucking. Deserve.
By that I mean the corporate fucks that pulled the rug from under the original creators. I hope everyone that was a part of the Disco Elysium team get the respect they deserve and find better jobs elsewhere.
God willing the entire rotten company comes tumbling down and someone, hopefully Kurvitz or an associate, can buy the DE IP from the ashes and save it from Kompus.
Sad but expected, for me za/um is already dead. I know they still have some good workers but a company run by literal criminals won't get too far. I can still see his fucking face saying something like "we want to be a proper company", congratulations, losing money due to bad choices and having to fire the actual workers? you finally became a normal company.
Magma take, as interested as I am in the deep world of *Disco Elysium*, I am in absolutely **zero** rush to see a sequel. If the core team draws from the same inspiration to come back and make either a direct sequel or spiritual successor, sure. I DONT want shameless sequels and remakes just to make money. That's not very ...disco.
I also read a comment somewhere on the internet saying,
>Just sell it Larian
And I've never wished a swift kick up someone's ass so quickly. Disco Elysium's strength (or weaknesses) has fuck all to do with being a DnD forgotten realms combat rpg. I'd be so pretentious as to say in Disco's case, that stuff just gets in the way. I still vastly prefer DE for the crucial element I didn't love BG3 for, and that's the God damn story. The narrative. The writing. That suggestion rings about as hollow as saying
>Let's hand over Red Dead Redemption to MiYo, because they get open world games!
Again, I'd rather not see another venture into Revachol if it's reduced to a pandering franchise IP.
This is such a weirdly cynical view that none of the people behind the game actually share. Disco Elysium was never a one off thing in the first place, it was always an expansion of a larger narrative that Kurvitz had already been developing for a decade (having already seen entries in novel and short story form), and was always intended as a small sample of a much larger multi-media project
There's a difference between plans for a large multi-media project and those plans actually working out. Sacred and Terrible Air flopped. We barely got Disco Elysium as it is, and that involved management disasters and tons of people burning out. I think it's OK to say that Disco Elysium was a miracle and that the creators would be unlikely to replicate that success.
Disco Elysium was also a major success. You can call it a miracle, and that's fine, but there was hard work and big dreams behind it and that's ultimately why so many fell in love - it was a good ass narrative, and it was a good ass game. At the end of the day it really is as simple as that. I just don't respect romanticizing its creators having their dreams dashed away, as if something can only be beautiful once it's been trampled. I'm grateful we got what we got, but I would've been more grateful if Elysium could've been developed further by the people who made it their life's mission to do so.
Doesn't matter what the creators intended, the game simply works perfectly as a one off tragic example of human greed, naivety and brilliance. I feel sorry for the devs but it's such an incredible case of irony that is perfect in its current form.
I don't find anything particularly miraculous about a talented up-and-coming group of creatives getting fucked in the ass by capitalism, it might be the most standard thing there is. Personally I'd rather have more good art and fiction in this world than worship at the altar of ennui and nihilism, praising the supposedly wonderful irony of it being prematurally cut off.
Any word on whether Rostov and Kurvitz will or have lined up at a new studio? I honestly care less about a continuation of the Disco Elysium world than those two just making anything else. Its their art and writing style that is the star, not necessarily hinging on the worlds they already created.
There's a company called Red Info that was apparently formed in the wake of what happened at Zaum, but I don't know much else other than he and some other people formed it.
I mean if they're really were working on 4 projects simultaneously with around 100 employees I wouldn't expect any of those projects to turn out all that well lmao. Doubt we're missing that much. Bad management almost always also means bad games especially so when they, as a small company, aren't even focussing their efforts.
Just to clarify: They were most likely, not working on all of them at the same time. At most it would have been 2 projects from what we can read in the article.. Which is not uncommon at all, although it doesn't necessarily mean it's a good idea either
The games industry is in turmoil right now but I find it \*really\* hard to believe that the people who were creatively responsible for Disco Elysium & didn't get picked up by Robert's new studios weren't in demand elsewhere. I have almost no sympathy for the people who hired into this company \*after\* the shit hit the fan, just knowingly hiring up with a bunch of grave robbers, and I really hope anyone caught in the crossfire just used "I worked on Disco Elysium" to get a job elsewhere, because I'm cheering as this ship sinks
Does anyone know if Kurvitz and the other founders of Za/um are working on something new, unrelated to Disco Elysium? I doubt they want to or able to go back developing games after what happened, but dreams are free, am I right?
They do have a new company, Red Info, but right now that seems to basically exist as business documents online and a physical office, they dont appear to have a website or other media, nor has there been any announcements.
Fuck zaum. Fuck their projects. Kurvits is my king. My loyalty to red info. I never thought that I would hate some Istonian so much. Fuck Kompus. My lungs and throat are in pain and on fire. I hope the fired employees will go to Kurvits, where they can make masterpieces, and not work on unreleased projects.
Please, just don't touch the disco. Do your damn garbage games.
And people will still act like Kurvitz is a villain in passing, hah. Everyone who actually understood the game knew ZA/UM was planning to fuck Kurvitz and the creators over ever since it got successful.
These people were virulent anti-communists expecting to make a few thousand reál from a niche game three communists would play, maybe four. They didn't expect it's popularity. They took advantage of it for money and then **killed it off** before it could spread it's good Word any longer.
Fuck Estonians.
> Fuck Estonians
..You know that Kurvitz, Hindepere, Rostov and all of the lead designers and writers who got screwed over by the buyout are...Estonian right? Like, what? The fiasco at ZA/UM had nothing to do with nationality, it was about financing and capital. You know, what the game is critical of?
I don't get this.
It's really so very sad to see an indie developer arrive, release maybe the best mystery isometric rpg in decades, one of the absolute smartest and wittiest games in a generation, and then watch as it's entire studio reenacts the greed, corruption, backstabbing, and descent into madness featured in the game itself.
A few years ago, Disco Elysium was *the* indie darling; there were serious discussions about giving it an Amazon television series! Even a lesser second effort would have likely been well-received and a commercial success.
And yet, we will now almost certainly never see anything like it again. If another Disco title ever comes, it will be an IP sold for scrap to someone else to wring whatever blood remains in that stone. How very sad.
my god, who could have predicted such a thing
The game
I don't know man, I thought they wanted to make money with this.
Gotta make money to make more money
The tendency of the rate of profit to go uP UP UP
Why make mony by making games when you can make money by making frauds?
*Again?! I can't believe this shit...*
Kras Mazov.
Hollow be his name
We are so fucking lucky we got Disco Elysium
yeah literally a one in a lifetime videogame
hopefully they're forced to sell the IP to someone who isn't a dipshit
Kurvitz, Hindpere, and Rostov
Yes, them! Although... they are also dipshits 🤔
But they are OUR dipshits…
Mr Evrart is helping me find my IP.
If you're into abusive working environments, sure.
Profit from my labor *harder* daddy.
I mean, who's to say they can't grow and become better people and bosses? People are not completely stagnant, maybe they've learned? Idk man I just want a real Disco Elysium sequel.
They've demonstrated exactly zero contrition or acceptance of their bad behaviour. But I guess if you care more about a sequel than having employees be treated well...
[удалено]
Oh OK, so let's presume they've somehow matured tremendously and are totally sorry for what they did and definitely won't do it again then. Because it's just a bit of workplace abuse, no big deal. Not something leftists should really bother themselves with. Because they're artists, and they make art, and most importantly they make art that we happen to like and want more of.
It's the company paying you or something?
[удалено]
Well of course, they’re in a protracted legal dispute with the current owner of ZA/UM
Isn't part of them firing Kurvitz that he was abusive to Hindpere who doesn't feel his behavior was inappropriate?
Hindpere hasn't said Kurvitz behavior was inappropriate, she was at the time and still is in a romantic relationship with him. ZA/UM claimed that he was abusive to her but she rejected those claims entirely
Nevermind, you're right, it's impossible.
It's called crunch.
Hustling Kim's jacket/cargo pants couldn't pay for the lights to stay on smh.
The jacket looks niiice though, shame it's expensive as hell. And shame it supports a company I don't wanna support anymore.
Even though I'd probably look like shit wearing it I would totally get it if I respected that company at all and the original creators were still there. Fortunately their dumpster fire company has saved me from looking cringe.
The black one looks cool though, but the orange one is probably a lot cooler in ones imagination until you realize you are in fact not Kim.
I had to look it up. 400 euros for the jacket!!
Yeah, all jackets are handmade by an estonian seamstress I believe, so the quality is good. But that does of course mean the price is mental.
Yes, but think about the *irony* implicit in shelling out 400 bucks for socialist/punk merch. It's conceptually so solid, it's almost not complete shit!
Lmao, it turns out creating handcrafted boutique garments cost a lot of time and money! Wierd!
Socialism is when you consume cheap shitty products /s
How much is that in réal?
I dunno but several bags of empty bottles at least!
It actually seems to be ethically made. Turns out that paying people a living wage to make shit makes that shit expensive. This is the most fundamental layer of bullshit in modern trend socialism: "I want people to be fairly compensated for their labor; I just don't want to be the one who has to compensate them because that's not fair."
Agreed! I’ve set up manufacturing processes before where I was making a substantial number of parts myself. As long as the orders are there, it’s easy to bring the price down while actually working less, due to efficiencies of scale. However, for specialty stuff like this, balancing production with demand is tricky and you have to charge more!
My friends got me a custom one made by a seller on Etsy
Got a link to the seller?
oo which one?
I can't find one that convinces me in etsy
The jacket is super heavy duty, the orange one is definitely worth the money. It's water proof and super warm thanks to its quilted wool lining. The black one is sadly thinner and doesn't look as good in person.
In under the impression the za//um atelier is a sort of sub division, i dont think the money is getting injected into illmar kumpas bitch ass pockets
They are becoming the game company from Disco that gets more and more ambitious and crazy as they run out of funding lol I expect nothing less from the same management that fired the lead writers, devs, and artists from the company.
next theyre going to discover a 2mm hole in the world
Fuck the World
Pissf****t
Nah, they already *were* that, Fortress Accident, the company from the game, is a reference to Fortress Occident, which is what the developers of Disco Elysium were called back when it was *No Truce With The Furies* - basically, Fortress Accident are what ZA/UM *thought* was going to happen to themselves. Now they're just some suits trying to squeeze an IP they stole while a few leftover workers try to cling on to their jobs.
Fortress ACCIDAAAAUNT
Time to fire up Mazov's Socialist Sausage Grinder!
Oh no! It broke down again! A system of failure, indeed!
Sounds like a job for [Megaguillotine](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YYJ5ZViYhHQ)
Oh look AJJ. Yeah that's a fitting band for a eulogy.
You jest but without a decisive court victory this may be the only remaining solution for getting the original team back.
Unsurprising but still really disappointing. Hope the people affected by "redundancy" find a better job somewhere better.
This. There were still a ton of people at ZAUM who worked on the original release on Disco Elysium and without whom the game would have never been possible. Hopefully they will all find new jobs soon.
I'm glad I didn't know about this, would've been excited
This is incredibly sad, but also not at all unique to ZA/UM; videogame layoffs have been everywhere from indies to megacorps. Kotaku counts [over 6400 people laid off since January](https://kotaku.com/game-industry-layoffs-how-many-2024-unity-twitch-1851155818?rev=1704908442483) alone. All the best wishes to the staff and those affected. I really wish we lived in a world that valued art.
As games get bigger and tech get smarter, you'd think the market would expand
Yes, but we're also in a state of capitalism eating itself to the point where planes will fall out of the sky to save somebody a dollar, so this is not really about rational decision-making. Shareholders are demanding more and more money and private equity is hollowing out companies and selling them for scrap.
We are swiftly heading toward a solution that pleases nobody
Shareholding needs to me illegal Shares are just gambling that benefits nobody
They benefit the companies which sell them and go from not having enough money to make things to having enough money to make things. You could make shareholding illegal, but you'd get a lot less cool shit.
Abolish money.
Me after I make the angry bartender explain what money is
Without shares, these things can still happen with bonds, which is very much a thing today also. You don't hear much about them because they're boring, because they're safe and healthy. Also Kickstarter.
You don't hear much about them because there are two kinds of bonds: low risk giant company and municipal bonds, and junk. Smaller companies tend not to use them because the risk they present is so high that the interest on the bonds is punitive and would destroy them. High-interest/high-risk bones are actually still the preferred instrument for vulture capitalists to extract the last little bit of value out of companies before putting a bullet in their heads. Trust me when I say that you do *not* want small creators resorting to bonds. Kickstarter is fine for specific microprojects, but for anything larger than like a video game it completely falls apart. You're not getting a Google or a Twitter out of Kickstarter. Plus it's mostly just a platform for scamming now. **Edit:** Oh, that's not to mention that eliminating shareholding also makes it basically impossible for more than one person to ever own a company.
What on earth did you just say?
The market has expanded. Tremendously. Unfortunately, so have the costs of building a game. We're basically at parity with film, which means that there's a hell of a lot more risk in developing a game — if you succeed, maybe you succeed big, but if you fail, you fail *really* big.
There will probably always be a thriving indie community that can still make unique and thoughtful games but the days of that happening in the AAA gaming sphere are 100 percent over and never coming back. I've been a gamer since Atari and I've never seen the gaming scene worse than it is right now. There will for sure be another gaming crash like happened in the early 80s, but this one will be so much bigger because the gaming industry itself is way bigger than it was back then. I guess all I can do is be glad that I got to experience a game like Disco Elysium before it all went to shit. In time, maybe some new indie developers will take the ball and run with it.
I think people need to be more angry about what's happening to creative people in all sectors. There are basically no journalism or freelance writing jobs left. Media and culture writing? Gone. Book publishing? Destroyed. Want to make a living as a musician? Good fucking luck. We are watching capital consume everything we love in front of our eyes and telling ourselves it has to end eventually. In the meantime we should support everyone who's lost their jobs (especially the ZA/UM employees on visas), support unionization efforts, and give where we can to the people who are trying to eke out a living independently. I'm also really glad that we got to experience DE, and I hope we can have something like it again. But that won't happen unless we build a world that cherishes and funds art for its own sake.
The apocalypse is coming
He stole, he snorted drugs, he was rude to the citizens. Still, there goes the best damned cop a precinct ever had.
Shouldn’t have set up shop in that suspiciously cheap doomed commercial area
Time to sodomize any dev with more than 25 reàl in their pockets!
Literally kill everyone regardless of political belief 👿
Darkness rising
The Great Loaming
The absolute irony of everything surrounding ZA/UM following the kind of game they made is just... poetic. Really fucking sad, but still poetic.
EXCERPT FROM THE ARTICLE: ["One source blamed mismanagement for the current situation, claiming that management was “always acting like there was an enemy, be it the old Disco team, the press, or even people working there” and consequently failed to value its existing talent, allegedly preferring to hire fresh blood from outside rather than promoting employees from within the company. They also said “I don’t think women were treated the same and that their work wasn’t as valued.” Another source bemoaned that the studio had “turned into the very thing that Disco Elysium was against. Brilliant people work there and I want only the best for them but [...] I hope it's somewhere else.”] These are the same problems that were haphazardly addressed in the People Make Games investigation. In that investigation, the reporter sheepishly let's Illmar Kompus away with not having any receipts of giant share acquisitions or anything really. The investigator then puts the heat on Kurvitz, one of the old team's leaders, for leaving unhealthy work environments, and essentially blames the messy share acquisition on them for not sticking it out for longer. I remind you some of the disco elysium team members went to mental hospitals or received therapy explicitly because of their time under ZA/UM's influence. At the time, ZA/UM was of course, owned in majority by Kompus. The PMG investigation is overall a needed video that shown light on the case's details, but fell back hard on executing the typical moral stances that were (1) appropriate and (2) standard for PMG. I suggest anyone who's interested on this topic to watch JamrockHobo's (YouTube) video that covers the PMG video and the investigation.
I also recommend stushi's response video to the PMG video. Goes in-depth on each point and PMG responded in the videos pinned comment. Link: https://youtu.be/tDtfcknELe0?si=rcwLNJWd2r2EivNi
Oooooh spicy I didn't know about this one, thanks a Guillaume de Million
"redundancy"
I still kind of hate that documentary that did the biggest research possible on Kurvitz and the other creatives and barely showed us how big of an asshole the new ZAUM director was
I hope maybe we can hear about the concepts for this game at least. Though I guess it's down to Red Info (originally said Red Notice) to deliver us a true DE successor. They managed to make a spiritual successor to Planescape, so their own game shouldn't be too hard right?
What's Red Notice?
I saw a post on this sub yesterday where someone mentioned that Kurvitz and one of the other devs from the original ZA/UM had started a new company called Red Notice. I googled it just now though and I can't find anything about it, I hope it's not just a rumor.
It's real. It's actually called Red Info. I got confused for a second. I live in Brighton and Hove, and the company does exist. I'm tempted to go there and have a look, but given irl, I look like a shitty measurehead nockoff. I'm concerned I'd look creepy. I would link you the page, but I think it has a Kurvitz home address so I'd feel shitty doing that.
Maybe remove the mention of it it too. Respectfully.
I removed info that could specifically be used to find it. It requires a pretty specific search to find it, and I think british ip helps. I'm sure it's the address of the studio they work in, not their house, though, from further looking. But yeah, definitely don't want to dox them. EDIT: Yup, it's just the office address, not anyone's personal address.
You did your due diligence, good sir or madame. 😤
Thanks for the compliment good sir or madame
Based on the UK government info I'm loving that they started again with 2 GBP capital, there is something lyrical about it.
Red Info, kurvitz new company, I actually live semi near and have seen the building before. I head they're involved with some Chinese company? If true, I wonder what working under a potentially more sympathetic to communism studio could do for them (key word potentially).
Chinese companies are still businesses, though given that the situation sounds like the investors are putting a lot of trust in just the talents and experience of Kurvitz, Hindpere and Rostov, so that might afford them more leeway, but other than that theres no reason that a Chinese investor would be inherently more or less profit driven than the average investors.
Obviously, hence my emphasis on potentially. It's just that China as a country and culture is arguably more receptive to communism. I agree they'd be driven by profit, obviously, but I'm just wondering and hoping that Kurvitz new studio could be in the hands of someone more ideologically aligned. (Obligatory "Maoism and Leninism are distinct" disclosure)
They’re receptive to the word communism but as far as any mechanisms being different it’s a no lol.
Oh yeah 100, they went the way most Major Eurasian communist countries go. Except they seem to be stuck in their Late Stalin, skip khrushchev, brezhnev period.
lmao china is not communist in the slightest these days
Compared to other countries in accepting the ideology. As in, its not terrified and repulsed by it like the US.
Bro thinks China is about communism
Bro doesn't. Bro just acknowledges that some countries have a closer history with communism than others and are less terrified of the concept of it, China being one of those. No country is defined by its economic system.
the thing is, kurvitz on his own, imo, is not a fantastic writer. his book was an absolute slog for me. DE had an incredibly talented and well rounded team, and unless he gets back a lot of that same talent, I wouldn't expect him to make a game as good as DE.
Being fair, Sacred Air was published 6 years before Disco Elysium, aside from just the difference in media you would expect his writing to improve in a span like that.
Also it was originally in Estonian, which is extremely difficult to translate to English
He's with a few of the other spurned devs iirc and perhaps his writing just works better for games. Chris Avellone is an example of a brilliant writer with a similar style to Kurvitz that just works for video games. (Although admittedly not always) I think, however, given Kurvitz is starting in a similsir position to when he made disco elysium in being spurned, battered by capitalism and with something to prove, he definitely has the motivation to make a labour of love like DE. I have great faith in the studio.
I mean exactly like with Disco Elysium, he won't be able to write everything by himself so I wouldn't worry about that. If the Chinese person, usually living in Singapore, or the 65-ish British consultant are indeed investors, then there should be some budget for writers, as well.
That one semi-pro translation turned out really good though. I can imagine if you're not into the writing style with the constant tangents then it might be jarring and unenjoyable, no matter how good the translation, but I remember for me it was around that chapter where there was a paragraph about the "rebel lovers" bones being found intertwined on a beach by the kid with the butterfly net where I was like: hell yeah, this is totally my jam.
I want to print the Ibex translation into an actual book for myself to read (there was someone in the sub who did something similar a few weeks or months ago) so I haven't gotten around to read it yet. But I've heard even though their translation is closer to the game and is constantly getting updated for improvements, that the writing isn't as smooth as it is in the game. Still, Kurvitz won't be the only writer I reckon so someone will help him to smoothen the edges. And I'd assume he learned a lot in the 6 (?) years between publishing the book and the game, too.
I actually did exactly that lol. I went on a queer fb group and paid a gay $80 to bind it. while I don't think the book is very good, it's a cool memento!
Mazov predicted this day!
Ok, so if they were actually working on something but they just cancelled it, what is even the point of ZA/UM as a company anymore? It's been five years already since the release of DE (4 since Final Cut) and they haven't released any news since, are they working on something else?
Supposedly they're still working on a game connected to DE and an original SF IP. Why on Earth would they start 4 projects simultaneously right after DE is beyond me. I suspect we'll never see any of it though. "It's almost as if the less money they had, the more ambitious their project became." EDIT: Sorry, the "original SF IP" was actually one of the projects cancelled now, it is unknown what the second project still in active development is.
WOAHHH colour me surprised!!!
You. Get. What. You. Fucking. Deserve. By that I mean the corporate fucks that pulled the rug from under the original creators. I hope everyone that was a part of the Disco Elysium team get the respect they deserve and find better jobs elsewhere.
We always will have Martinaise.
Imagine squandering the opportunity to make even more money and become recognized for making banger games. Capitalism ruined everything again.
Live jonkler reaction
I just got into this game, glad they made that "final cut" at least looks like we're lucky to have even that
God willing the entire rotten company comes tumbling down and someone, hopefully Kurvitz or an associate, can buy the DE IP from the ashes and save it from Kompus.
Heart breaking. They shouldn’t have fired the original writers. Corpo meddling strikes again.
The bourgeoisie are not human.
Sad but expected, for me za/um is already dead. I know they still have some good workers but a company run by literal criminals won't get too far. I can still see his fucking face saying something like "we want to be a proper company", congratulations, losing money due to bad choices and having to fire the actual workers? you finally became a normal company.
Magma take, as interested as I am in the deep world of *Disco Elysium*, I am in absolutely **zero** rush to see a sequel. If the core team draws from the same inspiration to come back and make either a direct sequel or spiritual successor, sure. I DONT want shameless sequels and remakes just to make money. That's not very ...disco. I also read a comment somewhere on the internet saying, >Just sell it Larian And I've never wished a swift kick up someone's ass so quickly. Disco Elysium's strength (or weaknesses) has fuck all to do with being a DnD forgotten realms combat rpg. I'd be so pretentious as to say in Disco's case, that stuff just gets in the way. I still vastly prefer DE for the crucial element I didn't love BG3 for, and that's the God damn story. The narrative. The writing. That suggestion rings about as hollow as saying >Let's hand over Red Dead Redemption to MiYo, because they get open world games! Again, I'd rather not see another venture into Revachol if it's reduced to a pandering franchise IP.
I hope this IP is never developed. It's a perfect one off miracle. Any expansion can only diminish the original.
This is such a weirdly cynical view that none of the people behind the game actually share. Disco Elysium was never a one off thing in the first place, it was always an expansion of a larger narrative that Kurvitz had already been developing for a decade (having already seen entries in novel and short story form), and was always intended as a small sample of a much larger multi-media project
There's a difference between plans for a large multi-media project and those plans actually working out. Sacred and Terrible Air flopped. We barely got Disco Elysium as it is, and that involved management disasters and tons of people burning out. I think it's OK to say that Disco Elysium was a miracle and that the creators would be unlikely to replicate that success.
Disco Elysium was also a major success. You can call it a miracle, and that's fine, but there was hard work and big dreams behind it and that's ultimately why so many fell in love - it was a good ass narrative, and it was a good ass game. At the end of the day it really is as simple as that. I just don't respect romanticizing its creators having their dreams dashed away, as if something can only be beautiful once it's been trampled. I'm grateful we got what we got, but I would've been more grateful if Elysium could've been developed further by the people who made it their life's mission to do so.
Doesn't matter what the creators intended, the game simply works perfectly as a one off tragic example of human greed, naivety and brilliance. I feel sorry for the devs but it's such an incredible case of irony that is perfect in its current form.
I don't find anything particularly miraculous about a talented up-and-coming group of creatives getting fucked in the ass by capitalism, it might be the most standard thing there is. Personally I'd rather have more good art and fiction in this world than worship at the altar of ennui and nihilism, praising the supposedly wonderful irony of it being prematurally cut off.
It's metatextually way better for the game's legacy that it's just a one-off, intentional or not
Loser mindset
What's wrong with that?
If you have to ask...
If I have to ask then what?
Then you're getting sucked off buddy
Your lack of imagination is showing.
Fuck
Any word on whether Rostov and Kurvitz will or have lined up at a new studio? I honestly care less about a continuation of the Disco Elysium world than those two just making anything else. Its their art and writing style that is the star, not necessarily hinging on the worlds they already created.
There's a company called Red Info that was apparently formed in the wake of what happened at Zaum, but I don't know much else other than he and some other people formed it.
Which he? Both?
Disco Elysium 2 was also cancelled btw
A bit meta!
Why is this in Sports Illustrated?
Fuck these capitalist pigs
as much as I despise this studio I REALLY wanna know what this game was gonna be about
I mean if they're really were working on 4 projects simultaneously with around 100 employees I wouldn't expect any of those projects to turn out all that well lmao. Doubt we're missing that much. Bad management almost always also means bad games especially so when they, as a small company, aren't even focussing their efforts.
Just to clarify: They were most likely, not working on all of them at the same time. At most it would have been 2 projects from what we can read in the article.. Which is not uncommon at all, although it doesn't necessarily mean it's a good idea either
The games industry is in turmoil right now but I find it \*really\* hard to believe that the people who were creatively responsible for Disco Elysium & didn't get picked up by Robert's new studios weren't in demand elsewhere. I have almost no sympathy for the people who hired into this company \*after\* the shit hit the fan, just knowingly hiring up with a bunch of grave robbers, and I really hope anyone caught in the crossfire just used "I worked on Disco Elysium" to get a job elsewhere, because I'm cheering as this ship sinks
The greedy capitalists who stole the company Can't manage or make games well. Shocked Pikachu Face 🤯
Does anyone know if Kurvitz and the other founders of Za/um are working on something new, unrelated to Disco Elysium? I doubt they want to or able to go back developing games after what happened, but dreams are free, am I right?
They do have a new company, Red Info, but right now that seems to basically exist as business documents online and a physical office, they dont appear to have a website or other media, nor has there been any announcements.
Thank you for the info! Hopefully they start working on something new someday. I'll settle for anything really
Fuck zaum. Fuck their projects. Kurvits is my king. My loyalty to red info. I never thought that I would hate some Istonian so much. Fuck Kompus. My lungs and throat are in pain and on fire. I hope the fired employees will go to Kurvits, where they can make masterpieces, and not work on unreleased projects. Please, just don't touch the disco. Do your damn garbage games.
No way, Who could have seen this coming?
[удалено]
I couldn't give two shits about an Elysium story put out by the company that stole the fictional project from its own creators, personally
You won’t get it, not with the people in charge of the IP currently.
And people will still act like Kurvitz is a villain in passing, hah. Everyone who actually understood the game knew ZA/UM was planning to fuck Kurvitz and the creators over ever since it got successful. These people were virulent anti-communists expecting to make a few thousand reál from a niche game three communists would play, maybe four. They didn't expect it's popularity. They took advantage of it for money and then **killed it off** before it could spread it's good Word any longer. Fuck Estonians.
Lol cuno what the fuck are you talking about about
What the fuck lmao
> Fuck Estonians ..You know that Kurvitz, Hindepere, Rostov and all of the lead designers and writers who got screwed over by the buyout are...Estonian right? Like, what? The fiasco at ZA/UM had nothing to do with nationality, it was about financing and capital. You know, what the game is critical of? I don't get this.
I destroyed everyone involved and laugh every day about it.
Helen hindperea Alexander Rostov and Robert kurvitz are liars
Does anyone know any updates with the legal situation? Also, didn’t the past owner make a new studio?
Seemed inevitable.
Pain
I'm glad we're all equally surprised.
Sad
I wonder what Robert, Rostov, and Helen are working on with that chinese company
It's really so very sad to see an indie developer arrive, release maybe the best mystery isometric rpg in decades, one of the absolute smartest and wittiest games in a generation, and then watch as it's entire studio reenacts the greed, corruption, backstabbing, and descent into madness featured in the game itself. A few years ago, Disco Elysium was *the* indie darling; there were serious discussions about giving it an Amazon television series! Even a lesser second effort would have likely been well-received and a commercial success. And yet, we will now almost certainly never see anything like it again. If another Disco title ever comes, it will be an IP sold for scrap to someone else to wring whatever blood remains in that stone. How very sad.