Core members of Disco Elysium team were forced to leave company late last year
Martin Luiga, a founding member of Disco Elysium developer ZA/UM, revealed in an article on Medium this morning that several key members of the development team left the company "involuntarily" late last year. Declaring the ZA/UM "cultural association" dead (distinguishing it from ZA/UM as a corporate entity), Luiga reveals that lead designer Robert Kurvitz, writer Helen Hindpere, and art director Aleksander Rostov were all forced out of the company. While he doesn't give specific details on what happened, he does lay blame at the feet of their investors, one of whom he notes in a comment was "the first guy to be convicted for investment fraud in Estonia." He does concede, however, that they may not have been able to make the game in the first place without these investors.
"The reason for dissolving the cultural organization is that it no longer represents the ethos it was founded on," writes Luiga. "I find that the organization was successful overall and most of the mistakes that were made were contingent, determined by the sociocultural conditions we were thrown into."
Disco Elysium released in 2019 to massive critical acclaim, largely due to Hindpere and Kurvitz's script, as well as Rostov's distinctive artstyle. Luiga notes that their departure should "seem like bad news for the loving fans that are waiting for the Disco sequel." A new Disco Elysium sequel hasn't been officially announced, but ZA/UM are working on a new game, and recent hiring notices from them seem to match up with what Luiga is reporting. The company was looking for new writers late last year, and some job listings were spotted in July for two environmental artists and a "sales and monetization specialist," which asked for candidates to be skilled in maximizing revenue on "live services content."
Luiga signs off his message as being written from "Tallinn Inpatient Treatment Centre of Psychiatry Clinic, Ward IX." Tallinn is the capital of Estonia, the country of origin for ZA/UM, though it relocated to the United Kingdom before Disco Elysium's release. It is currently unknown whether this sign-off is sincere or a joking expression of his distress over ZA/UM's current state.
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