Again in February, Graham wrote about potential redundancies at Disco Elysium studio ZA/UM following the cancellation of a standalone growth to that recreation, codenamed X7. Now, PC Gamer’s Ted Litchfield has spoken to 12 present and former workers concerning the circumstances surrounding the cancellation, notably the small print of the layoffs, the growth, and the “humiliation marketing campaign” suffered by author Argo Tuulik as obvious retaliation for his participation in final 12 months’s in depth Folks Make Video games documentary. You’ll be able to, and will, learn PC Gamer’s report right here.
To get you in control in as few hyperlinks as attainable. Disco Elysium launched on October fifteenth 2019. Alice Bee preferred it. Alec preferred it. I preferred it. Everybody preferred it. Nothing dangerous ever occurred once more. Then, inexplicably, dangerous issues did begin occurring. Setting creator and lead ideasman Robert Kurvitz received booted from the studio, different leads adopted him, insults have been thrown, fraud was alleged, issues received resolved but in addition not likely. It was such an extremely messy state of affairs you can make, nicely, a two-and-a-half hour PMG video out of it.
Some key artistic expertise from Disco Elysium did stay on the studio nonetheless – comparable to author and narrative designer Justin Keenan – and extra tasks have been within the works. A full sequel to Disco Elysium was canceled after Kurvitz, Rostov, and Hindpere left the studio, and an unrelated sci-fi RPG was placed on pause in 2023, however has since been cancelled. X7, a standalone growth to the unique DE, was canceled in February. “Practically 1 / 4 of the studio’s workers” have been additionally laid off at the moment, together with the X7 lead author Argo Tuulik.
“I felt {that a} sturdy resentment developed in direction of Argo for rising too massive for his sneakers, so to talk,” fellow X7 lead author Dora Klindžić instructed PC Gamer. “I received the sense that there was resentment for the very fact Argo was getting a lot assist from followers, whereas [ZA/UM CEO Ilmar Kompus], Tõnis, and the corporate weren’t.”
“They put Argo by way of a humiliation marketing campaign,” Klindžić continues. “They made him apologize to folks for what he stated within the [People Make Games] interview. They undermined his confidence and tried to make him doubt himself. They instructed him he was incompetent, unqualified, and unfit to steer his personal undertaking, demoted him and made him invisible contained in the studio.”
Klindžić had left their job as an instructional physicist and area mission scientist in 2022 to work on the sequel to Disco Elysium. “I felt I had simply deserted my total life and profession solely to finish up in a studio the place the folks I had come to work with have been fired, and the undertaking I used to be meant to work on shelved with no purpose given.”
The X7 undertaking itself may have been launched round 2025, though timelines differ with the workers Litchfield spoke to. Once more, the unique article is nicely price your time. I will not trouble declaring the eyeball-scooping irony that probably the most radical and provoking mainstream recreation in latest reminiscence has continued to be surrounded by a lot baffling greed and spite, though I suppose I simply did.
