A trio of key builders at Disco Elysium developer ZA/UM left the corporate. Editor Martin Luiga introduced on his weblog (and later by Twitter) that lead designer Robert Kurvitz, artwork director Aleksander Rostov, and author Helen Hindpere have been allegedly pressured by studio management to go away final 12 months, and that ZA/UM was preserving the information quiet.  

“Neither Kurvitz, Hindpere nor Rostov are working there for the reason that finish of final 12 months and their leaving the corporate was involuntary,” wrote Luiga. The trio later confirmed their departures on Rostov’s Twitter. 

ZA/UM started as a gaggle of artists in Estonia (together with Luiga, Rostov, Kurvitz, and Hindpere) that established a recreation improvement studio to adapt Kurvitz’s novel right into a detective RPG. When Disco Elysium got here out in 2019, it launched to essential acclaim and have become an awards darling. 

According to sources chatting with Kotaku, the cut up of Kurvitz and Rostov particularly is additional difficult because of the pair being the studio’s co-founders and shareholders. An inner electronic mail from final 12 months that introduced Kurvitz’s departure additionally allegedly threatened authorized motion in opposition to him.

In the feedback of his weblog, Luiga additional implied that the trigger for the trio’s leaving was Elysium’s govt producers, Kaur Kender and Tõnis Haavel. “One of them was the primary man to be convicted for funding fraud in Estonia,” he mentioned, referencing Haavel’s arrest in 2016. 

“All the identical,” acknowledged Luiga, “idk if we’d have managed to get the preliminary funding with out these folks.”

In an announcement to Kotaku, ZA/UM did not touch upon Luiga’s allegations. Instead, it wrote that “the event of Disco Elysium was and nonetheless is a collective effort, with each staff member’s contribution important and valued as a part of a better complete.”