We had previously reported on the issues surrounding Disco Elysium, now the subject of litigation between the original heads in development and the studio. Now, a new YouTube documentary from People Make Games corroborates some of those earlier details, and paints a muddy picture of the entire situation.
For the sake of clarity, we will stick to the bigger picture painted by People Make Games here, and highlight the main points. We also want to make clear, regardless of what allegations are made by who and directed to who, none of these allegations are a free pass to contact, harass, bully, or send threats to any of the people in this story.
The side of the story that we had heard about first involves ZA/UM CEO Ilmar Kompus. Ilmar was not a founder at ZA/UM, but does take a substantial share later. Around 2021 to 2022, Ilmar becomes majority shareholder for ZA/UM, after purchasing shares from Margus Linnamae, one of the wealthiest men in Estonia, and Disco Elysium’s original big money backer.
Disco Elysium’s famous creative heads, Robert Kurvitz and Aleksander Rostov allege that this transaction happened without their knowledge. Another Disco Elysium investor, Kaur Kender, also alleged that Ilmar pulled a fraudulent stunt. Ilmar bought the rights to a Disco Elysium sequel prototype from ZA/UM, codenamed Pioneer One, for £ 1. Said prototype consisted of three papers with drawings and diagrams. He then sold it back to ZA/UM for € 4.8 million. Ilmar was interviewed for this documentary and denied both allegations.
Outside of the bounds of this documentary, it had been reported that ZA/UM had ended the legal battles surrounding it. ZA/UM settled with Kender, who has sold his shares to the company, and Kurvitz’ and Rostov’s lawsuit had been dropped due to lack of evidence.
Unfortunately, there is another side to this story that reflects poorly on Kurvitz and Rostov. Multiple ZA/UM studio employees, including old friends of Kurvitz and Rostov, corroborated Ilmar’s claims that the two had created a toxic work environment in the company.
Argo Tuulik , a writer at ZA/UM, says that Kurvitz’ claim that he wrote half of the game ‘isn’t true.’ He also said that Kurvitz would give feedback like ‘it looks too s*#t’ and ‘too ugly’.
Justin Keenan, also a writer, had a heartbreaking story about the callousness of Kurvitz and Rostov. He accused them of abandoning the Disco Elysium team while they had worked on Disco Elysium The Final Cut. They had left Keenan, Tuulik, and others to do all the work without guidance, while they took an extended vacation that took two months.
The most disturbing new allegations involve ZAUM’s lead technologist Petteri Solonen. Ilma claims Kurvitz told Petteri to share the source code of Disco Elysium to him. Petteri confirmed this story and explained he disclosed it after they had been fired.
This was allegedly part of a scheme to bring Disco Elysium to a new publisher, and People Make Games stated they were told that publisher would have been Larian Studios.
More than anything else, the allegations of Kurvitz’ toxicity in particular are quite damning. People Make Games shared a message another ZAUM employee, Dennis Havel, sent to Kurvitz, after he had unexpectedly showed up in a company chat. In the message, Havel accused Kurvitz of ‘bully behavior’ and ‘being unprofessional’ in said chat.
On the flip side, ZAUM’s current employees also spoke about the harassment they had received from Disco Elysium fans themselves. Once again, we reiterate here that informing our readers of these events and allegations is not an invitation to such behavior.
All these new allegations from ZAUM’s own employees about their former creative heads is quite disheartening, but it was important that they received a platform to share their side of the story. Kurvitz had claimed they were not done seeking legal action vs his own studio, but it certainly sounds like ZA/UM or their employees have grounds to sue him.
We don’t look forward to sharing any new developments in this story, if any, but perhaps this whole incident is a moment for the community to reflect on their own fandom. We shouldn’t ever forget that the people who make these brilliant games we love, are people like us, in the end.
You can watch the People Make Games documentary below.