Disco Elysium News

Disco Elysium dev files lawsuit against the studio that allegedly kicked him out

Alright folks, bear with me, because it doesn't look like this one is going to get less messy. As reported by Tech News Space, it appears that Robert Kurvitz, the lead developer and writer on Disco Elysium, is suing Studio ZA/UM, the development studio of Disco Elysium, via his own company Telomer. Kotaku AU seem to have corroborated this, finding a record on the Estonian Ministry of Justice's website showing Telomer has filed an application against ZA/UM Studio to "obtain information and review documents", which you can see for yourself here.

This comes after Martin Luiga announced (in a frankly kinda weird post) the dissolution of The ZA/UM Cultural Association, and that Kurvitz, writer Helen Hindpere, and art director Aleksander Rostov were no longer working at Studio ZA/UM.

Earlier this month, Martin Luiga—Studio ZA/UM founding member and developer on one of PC Gamer's all-time favourites Disco Elysium—announced the "dissolution of the ZA/UM Cultural Association." He said that the company as a cultural project "no longer represents the ethos it was founded on," adding that artist Aleksander Rostov, and writers Helen Hindpere and Robert Kurvitz, left "involuntarily." In a follow-up interview, Luiga said that the three were "fired on false premises," implying that legal action against ZA/UM was incoming...
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Disco Elysium developer alleges creative leads were "fired on false premises"

Core developers of Disco Elysium were allegedly "fired on false premises", according to Martin Luiga. Luiga, who worked on the game in its early days, made the comment in a new interview in which he also says that he believes "fans had a right to know" about the developers' departure from the studio.

Last week came the news that several key figures behind Disco Elysium, arguably the best game you can play on PC, had left developer Studio ZA/UM. The news came via a blog post from Martin Luiga, a founding member of the studio, who said that Robert Kurvitz, Helen Hindpere, and Aleksandr Rostov had all left: Kurvitz and Hindpere being the driving forces of Disco Elysium's lauded script, with Rostov's impressionistic art style a defining feature...
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Multiple key members of Disco Elysium developer ZA/UM have left the company "involuntarily"

It appears that three members of Disco Elysium developer ZA/UM have "involuntarily" left the company.

This comes from a recent Medium post from Martin Luiga, co-founder and secretary of the ZA/UM cultural association. As a note: the post has announced that the ZA/UM cultural association has been dissolved. This association was an art collective, and was not directly responsible for development of the game, as ZA/UM the company still exists. In the post, Luiga also revealed that ZA/UM Studio founder and Disco Elysium designer Robert Kurvitz, writer Helen Hindpere, and art director Aleksander Rostov haven't been at the company "since the end of last year."

Rostov later confirmed the news on his personal Twitter account writing, "We confirm that we are no longer at the studio," on behalf of himself, Kurvitz, and Hindpere. Luiga noted in the post that the "their leaving the company was involuntary," though didn't elaborate much in the post about why this took place.