It is sad but unsurprising to hear that Tuulik was one of the people recently fired. I had almost kinda hoped the studio would move on and make non Elysium games eventually. There were still talented people there, and when you look into it most gaming companies are run by scum. It seems unlikely at this point that they'll even be able to do that though. It really just does exist to siphon money off Disco Elysium sales at this point, I think.

As for the copyright, yes, you are technically correct. Nothing can be set in that world. I'm also not a copyright lawyer, so take everything I say with a grain of salt, but from my understanding outside of the actual content of the game there's really not much that's copywritable outside of some names. If they just change the names and set a new story in a new city with new characters there's really not anything anyone can do to stop them. Even for the city they'd really just have to change the details. You can't copyright idea of a vaguely eastern European vaguely post-Sovietish sci-fi/fantasy city. Maybe they'd need to change one big thing revealed near the end that I don't want to talk about because of spoilers. This is all replying to someone who said they haven't played the game and don't want to be spoiled after all. Even for that they'd just have to change the name and some of the details of how it works though, I think. A lot of what makes it what it is is to vague to be copyrighted, I think.