Disco Elysium developer reveals forced break up as sequel teased-GameCentral-Entertainment – Metro

Disco Elysium – artistic differences strike again (pic: ZA/UM)

The good news for Disco Elysium fans is that a sequel is already underway, the bad news is that all the key creatives have left the developer.

As a game, Disco Elysium prided itself on doing things differently, with its inspired take on traditional role-playing games and how to customise the mind and personality of your character. The developer was the previously unknown ‘cultural association’ ZA/UM and it seems they’re doing things differently too…

Although you’d assume they’re busy working on a sequel nothing has been heard from them since the release of the game’s Final Cut last year and now, all of sudden, founding member Martin Luiga has implied that the lead designer, writer, and art director have been forced to leave the studio.

Luigia, who describes himself as the ‘secretary’ of ZA/UM, revealed that none of the three have worked at the company since the end of last year, with the trio later confirming the fact via Twitter.

In a short but bad tempered sounding blog post, Luigia claimed that the reason for ‘dissolving the cultural organisation’ is that it ‘no longer represents the ethos it was founded on.’

‘People and ideas are meant to be eternal; organisations may well be temporary,’ he added. ‘I still encourage people to organise, and I would say that one of the qualities that the ZA/UM cultural organisation sorely lacked was pretty much any formal structure.’

On Medium, he added, sarcastically, that the news ‘would seem like bad news for the loving fans that are waiting for the Disco sequel.’ In subsequent tweets, Luigia made it clear that a sequel was indeed underway and work will continue even with the departures.

Given how disgruntled he sounds, it was at first unclear whether what he said was true but a tweet by art director Aleksander Rostov confirmed the exit of the three key developers.

ZA/UM itself then issued a statement stating that the studio still exists and is working on its ‘next project’.

‘Like any video game, the development of Disco Elysium was and still is a collective effort, with every team member’s contribution essential and valued as part of a greater whole,’ said a ZA/UM spokesperson.

‘At this time, we have no further comment to make other than the ZA/UM creative team’s focus remains on the development of our next project, and we are excited to share more news on this with you all soon.’

However, lead designer Robert Kurvitz will be difficult to replace as he was the key creative behind the whole game and also wrote the 2013 novel Sacred And Terrible Air, which set-up the universe that Disco Elysium is set in.

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