The story behind Disco Elysium and its studio ZA/UM has become more complicated with new statements from the studio.
ZA/UM has struck back at the employees they had recently fired last week, accusing them of misconduct and attempting to steal the Disco Elysium IP. Before we can get into this in detail, it’s necessary to review the previous sequence of events.
Last October 1, studio co-founder Martin Luiga revealed that ZA/UM had fired multiple high level employees, namely, game designer Robert Kurvitz, art director Alexander Rostov, and writer Helen Hindpere. Luiga had also accused the people in charge of ZA/UM of attempting to steal the Disco Elysium IP.
At the end of last month, it was reported that Kurvitz was suing ZA/UM, by having his company Telomer OÜ file the lawsuit for him. It had also come to light that Kurvitz was still a shareholder in ZA/UM, and allegations had come to light that it was in fact, he, who was planning to take the Disco Elysium IP for themselves.
Today, we are looking at an independent Estonian news investigation behind ZA/UM and Disco Elysium. The Estonian journalists discovered on their own that accused the former ZA/UM higher ups of misconduct and mismanagement.
ZA/UM CEO Ilmar Kompus was asked to respond to the story, and this is where Ilmar corroborated parts of the report. He outlined these actions from the former employees:
- limited to no engagement in their work and responsibilities
- creating a toxic work environment
- misconduct, including verbal abuse and gender discrimination
- attempting to steal IP
Ilmar had this to say about how the former employees humiliated co-workers:
“They treated their co-workers very badly. Despite talking to them repeatedly, things did not improve. Therefore, the company was forced to fire them. Robert is said to have been known for belittling women and co-workers in the past, but this was previously unknown to the company. It would be very short-sighted of a growing international company to tolerate such behaviour.”
GamesIndustry’s investigation paints a very muddled picture. It must be noted that ZA/UM was itself originally an artistic collective, and had to be incorporated as a game studio to work on and publish Disco Elysium.
Some of the older employees of ZA/UM who are still in the company are hesitant to talk about the Kurvitz accusations because they feel he helped get them their jobs. Newer employees do not feel they have a clear picture of the situation themselves.
Ilmar also confirmed news of Kurvitz’ lawsuit, and in the latest update, Kurvitz put out new accusations that ZA/UM’s current management, including Ilmar, had acquired ownership of the company fraudulently.
As one of GamesIndustry’s sources put it, the situation is one with “CEO corporate scheming on one side, a toxic auteur on the other.”
This will surely be not the last we will here about this unfortunate situation.
Source: GamesIndustry via PushSquare
