Disco Elysium Creators’ Studio Has Dissolved

Sad news for fans of Disco Elysium.

It turns that developers ZA/UM Cultural Association have dissolved, with its key members being pushed out of the company. The members include Robert Kurvitz, Aleksander Rostove, and Helen Hindpere among others. Here’s the official post from founding member Martin Luiga who is still representing ZA/UM.

“I, Martin Luiga, a founding member and Secretary of the ZA/UM cultural association, as well as the assembler of most of the core team, am hereby dissolving the ZA/UM cultural association (not to be confused with the ZA/UM company, on which subject I would note that neither Kurvitz, Hindpere nor Rostov are working there since the end of last year and their leaving the company was involuntary. Which would seem like bad news for the loving fans that are waiting for the Disco sequel.)

The reason for dissolving the cultural organization is that it no longer represents the ethos it was founded on. People and ideas are meant to be eternal; organizations may well be temporary. 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. I still encourage people to organize, and I would say that one of the qualities that the ZA/UM cultural organization sorely lacked was pretty much any formal structure.”

While a Disco Elysium sequel is being developed by the company formerly known as ZA/UM, the key folks who made the game have left. Below are additional tweets from Martin Luiga concerning the situation.

Nah I think that things with the sequel are actually sweet enough, you might even get it the way it was meant, it might take a shit ton of time but RPG fans are sorta accustomed to waiting, ain't they

— Kultuurimagasin «John Smith» (@verekuningas) October 1, 2022

The money people come from a background which says you gotta grab when you can even when it in fact does not make much economic sense.

— Kultuurimagasin «John Smith» (@verekuningas) October 1, 2022