Three key members of the development team behind Disco Elysium, including lead writer Robert Kurtwiz, lead of art Aleksander Rostov, and writer Helen Hindpere, “involuntarily” left the company at the end of last year, according to Martin Luiga, a founding member of the ZA/UM Cultural Association
One of the editors of the studio, Luiga, shared the news via a blog post, saying that the ZA/UM Cultural Association has already been dissolved even though he still encourages people to organize. Luiga also claimed that the reason for dissolving the association is that “it no longer represents the ethos it was founded on”. It looks like the three core members of the development team were forced to leave the company, as Luiga confirmed that these developers had not been working at the company since the end of last year and their leaving was “involuntary”.
“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.” Luiga described the situation complained about within the company.
These former team members have not given any information on what they plan to do next in their respective careers. Despite this unfortunate news for fans who have been waiting for Disco Elysium 2, Luiga assured on Twitter that it won’t affect the development process. “Things with the sequel are actually sweet enough, you might even get it the way it was meant,” his post reads.
Disco Elysium has been considered one of the best detective games of all time, and the beloved indie title received praise from critics and players alike. There is no official release date for Disco Elysium 2 at the time being. However, given that it took three years to develop the first game, fans can expect the sequel to launch sometime in 2023.
