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Disco Elysium 2 just got cancelled and ZA/UM self-destroyed (www.youtube.com)
submitted 8 months ago by p03locke@lemmy.dbzer0.com to c/games@sh.itjust.works
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[-] Dangdoggo@kbin.social 113 points 8 months ago

I dunno I love Disco Elysium but that company can fuck right off. They wrestled away the IP from the original creators and the sequel was certain to be a confused hack job with no sense of what made the original so special. The game is definitely worth playing but it's hard to advocate giving them any money when none of it goes to the artists who made it :\

[-] ModernRisk@lemmy.dbzer0.com 41 points 8 months ago

Sail the high seas for this one

[-] AfroMustache@lemmynsfw.com 14 points 8 months ago

Yeah to be honest my friend told me the other day "DE2 got cancelled" and I was surprised because I thought the company was already basically defunct after what happened. I mean there is no way a DE2 could be anything other than a soulless cash grab after everything anyway so there's not really much to do other than to shrug your shoulders at this news.

Also this is one of the few instances I'd advocate pirating an indie game

[-] rtxn@lemmy.world 74 points 8 months ago

Terrible for the employees, but I have no pity for ZA/UM or its top-level parasites.

[-] Sibbo@sopuli.xyz 31 points 8 months ago

Sad. The first game was perfect to play together with the wife.

Arguably though, Disco Elysium is such a unique art piece, any successor would likely fall very short on any expectations.

[-] refurbishedrefurbisher@lemmy.sdf.org 25 points 8 months ago

TIL it was in the works to begin with. Still haven't played the first one, though

[-] p03locke@lemmy.dbzer0.com 35 points 8 months ago

Well worth checking out the first game. Just, like, maybe get it from a source that isn't going to give the money to ZA/UM.

[-] refurbishedrefurbisher@lemmy.sdf.org 31 points 8 months ago

Yarr. From what I hear, ZA/UM fucked the developers hardcore. Not too sure of the details because I've been trying to avoid spoilers.

Wonder if there's a way to pay the devs directly.

[-] zephr_c@lemm.ee 23 points 8 months ago

I know this is an unpopular thing to say, but it's... more complicated than that. Lots of people worked on the game, and most of them stayed at ZA/UM after the lead creative guy got screwed over. The people at the top now are pure bloodsucking parasites and don't deserve your money, but saying that Robert Kurvitz was solely responsible for the game is unfair to the dozens of people who also poured their hearts and souls into the game, and don't ever want anything to do with him again.

[-] p03locke@lemmy.dbzer0.com 13 points 8 months ago

but saying that Robert Kurvitz was solely responsible for the game is unfair to the dozens of people who also poured their hearts and souls into the game

I don't think anybody is saying that.

[-] zephr_c@lemm.ee 5 points 8 months ago

Nobody ever explicitly says that, and if you press them they'll deny it, but people say things that only make sense if they believe that all the time.

[-] Coelacanth@feddit.nu 12 points 8 months ago

Sure, and many people forget Helen Hindpere (second lead writer) and Aleksandr Rostov (art director) also left with Kurvitz. And even then, despite Rostov being responsible for the overall visual style the Thought Cabinet was painted by Anton Vill, and I don't know for sure who made the portraits/skill depictions but it might also have been him (though they are more in the style of Rostov - see the 3 archetype paintings which were created by Rostov).

Look, I know it was a collaborative effort, but even disregarding the obvious centrality of these three people to the project the issue isn't really about that. Kurvitz has been working on this world together with his friends since they were teenagers. It's clearly his life's work. Just because he was allegedly a shitty boss doesn't mean he deserves to have the IP stolen from under him.

[-] zephr_c@lemm.ee 4 points 8 months ago

Sure, they were all absolutely important to the game, and that matters, but saying Kurvitz, his girlfriend, and his best friend all left together when no one else wanted to isn't really impressing me with how great of a person he is to work for. I don't think he deserved anything that happened to him, but I am absolutely certain that the only thing holding the studio together was a collective desire to see the game finished from everyone involved. There was never going to be a Disco Elysium 2. There is no force on Earth that could have held that studio together with all the talented people involved past the release of the game. It sucks that the scum of the Earth got control of what's left of it, and it sucks that Kurvitz lost the rights to his life's work, but in the end it doesn't actually change much other than one asshole getting like 60% of the residuals on sales of Disco Elysium. Which to be clear is a bad thing. I'm not happy about the situation. This was all lightning in a bottle though. It was never going to happen again.

[-] Coelacanth@feddit.nu 5 points 8 months ago

Kurvitz, his girlfriend, and his best friend all left together when no one else wanted to isn't really impressing me with how great of a person he is to work for.

I don't know what their personal relations has to do with their creative accomplishments, and it seems you are arguing a different point than I am so I'm confused. I'm not really concerned with how Kurvitz was as a boss and leader, I wasn't there so I couldn't possibly have anything to comment regarding the allegations (though from reading the interviews with the devs who were fired just the other day it seems the problems with the toxic work environment endured way past his exit so he can't have been the sole cause unlike what the corporate leaders claimed).

I do agree that it was lightning in a bottle and unlikely to happen again, but the state of affairs do change more than who gets to collect residual income from DE sales over the years: Kurvitz and co. are not allowed to do further work in the world of Elysium. Sure, if the allegations were true he would maybe not be able to hold another video game development team together, but perhaps he might write another novel?

Regardless of what you think of him and his friends, they together created the world of Elysium over the course of several decades, which is what makes it so rich and deep. What makes me most sad is that they're locked out of further exploring it, and subsequently so are we.

[-] zephr_c@lemm.ee 1 points 8 months ago

I don't think it has anything to do with their creative accomplishments. I think it needed clarifying that no one he is not personally involved with outside of work wanted to continue working for him. Frankly you claiming to be confused by that is concerning to me.

There were six writers, and dozens of other people, for most of the development of Disco Elysium. Why would it be any better for just three of them to get the rights? This was always going to be a mess where people got screwed in ways they didn't deserve. I can say that Kurvitz ended up being the one that got most screwed and that genuinely sucks, but also there was no way it was going to turn out any better. Those things aren't mutually exclusive.

As for Kurvitz in the future, I don't know how this will turn out, and it's true that he can't write any direct sequels involving any of the characters or locations explicitly in the game, but basically nothing else about the game is even really copywritable. He can still write stories in the same world with the serial numbers filed off. I don't know if he will. He might spend the rest of his life being bitter about what was stolen from him, but if he wants to go back to what he's good at he always has that option.

[-] Coelacanth@feddit.nu 3 points 8 months ago

I was under the impression that ZA/UM owns the rights for not just the game but the world of Elysium, though I am not a copyright lawyer or anything so I don't know what exactly is copywritable.

There were six writers, and dozens of other people, for most of the development of Disco Elysium. Why would it be any better for just three of them to get the rights?

As far as I know the world of Elysium was created and developed as a setting for a D&D game Kurvitz was DMing for his friend group starting from his teens. That group of people built it together over two decades. Kurvitz also wrote a novel set in that world, which released in 2013. The setting already existed and was pretty developed when work started on Disco Elysium the video game. If you want to get into the weeds I agree that people like Hindpere and Rostov have less of a claim on the IP than people like Martin Luiga and Argo Tuulik who were part of that campaign DMed by Kurvitz. Tuulik was the last writer who worked on DE remaining at ZA/UM, but he seems to have been fired the other day. The interview with him was a good read.

It's a sorry situation for everyone involved.

[-] zephr_c@lemm.ee 0 points 8 months ago

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.

[-] Coelacanth@feddit.nu 4 points 8 months ago

I don't think it's as easy as just changing some names and moving on, mainly on a personal level. The attachment to this world has to be immense after all these years. I don't think Kurvitz and co. want to just make something set in a fantastical post-soviet setting, I think they want to work in Elysium specifically. At least that's how I would feel, were I in their shoes.

Second, there is so much detail in the world that both gives it character a and is most likely copywritable. They have to come up with new, legally distinct versions of the innocentic system, Dolores Dei, the Coalition, the >!pale!< and the isolas etc etc. I think it's much more likely they do something completely different than something akin to "legally distinct DE". Though if Kurvitz just ends up bitterly doing nothing but relapse on his alcoholism then that wouldn't surprise me either. Again, that's probably what I would do in his shoes.

[-] p03locke@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 points 8 months ago

Maybe you should just watch the video, and the previous one he did on the subject?

[-] PipedLinkBot@feddit.rocks 1 points 8 months ago

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[-] ALoafOfBread@lemmy.ml 7 points 8 months ago

HARDCORE TO THE MEGA

[-] Hyperreality@kbin.social 1 points 8 months ago

Gog?

[-] Kecessa@sh.itjust.works 3 points 8 months ago

Why would a legal retailer not give money to the studio that created the game?

[-] Hyperreality@kbin.social 0 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago)

I don't know if they pay per sale, or if they bought the right to sell the game with a one off lump sum as they have done in the past for at least some games.

If it's the latter, my buying the game on gog doesn't send any more money to the original studio.

[-] zephr_c@lemm.ee 2 points 8 months ago

Well, I certainly don't know any details, but I'd imagine they mostly do that with older or more obscure games where it's just not worth the time to make sure everyone gets their pennies sorted out properly. Probably not so much with modern game of the year winners.

[-] Donkter@lemmy.world 11 points 8 months ago

It's pretty close to a perfect storytelling experience. Extraordinarily unique.

[-] Zehzin@lemmy.world 21 points 8 months ago

Not the ending I wanted for Elysium, but it's hard to argue it's not the most thematically appropriate

[-] DaseinPickle@leminal.space 10 points 8 months ago

I hope Larian Stusios will buy this IP, rehire the original writers and so great things with it.

[-] chemical_cutthroat@lemmy.world 25 points 8 months ago

We really need to stop shoving every story related property into Larian's lap.

[-] 1simpletailer@startrek.website 23 points 8 months ago

Ehhh I don't think Larians quite up to the task. Yeah BG3 has an engaging story and some good characters, but politically it doesn't really have anything to say outside of some queer representation. It's the Sunday Friend's favorite new RPG!

[-] SnotFlickerman@lemmy.blahaj.zone 8 points 8 months ago

Yeah playing DnD isn't some blow against the right-wing theocracy establishment like it was in the 1980's.

Source: Was never allowed to play DnD as a kid because it was 'Satanic.' Grew up during 80's Satanic Panic.

[-] WarmSoda@lemm.ee 5 points 8 months ago

Plus I don't think Disco E really needs flammable/steamable puddles everywhere.

[-] DragonTypeWyvern@literature.cafe 4 points 8 months ago

Doesn't it?

[-] WarmSoda@lemm.ee 3 points 8 months ago

Well, when you put it that way...

[-] topherclay@lemmy.world 3 points 8 months ago

Mr. Evrart is helping me find my red barrel.

[-] very_well_lost@lemmy.world 2 points 8 months ago

UN JOUR JE SERAI DE RETOUR PRÈS DE TOI

[-] DaseinPickle@leminal.space 5 points 8 months ago

Well that’s why they need to hire the original writers. I don’t think anybody would consider Baldurs Gate especially political, maybe expect for a few fringe right wingers. But Larian have the resources, technical expertise and know how to build a big RPG and if they bought the IP, I’m sure they would respect the source material. You wouldn’t want to make a Disco Elysium game if you where to afraid to get political.

[-] Vash63@lemmy.world 4 points 8 months ago

No, because that still gives these assholes money. I hope someone hires the original team to make something new.

[-] Kolanaki@yiffit.net 7 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago)

I wouldn't mind someone else just making a game like Disco Elysium with all the myriad of possibilities and angles and such. Disco being extremely well-written was mere icing on the cake compared to the agency it has for an RPG. It goes above and beyond what even great RPGs like Baldur's Gate (any of the 3) do.

Though I suppose you would need a great writer to actually think of all the different possibilities of any particular dialogue or scene... 🤔

On the subject of writers... Didn't one of the writers for Disco have actual books published? Anyone know what they are or if they are as good as the game?

[-] birbs@lemmy.world 6 points 8 months ago

The book is Sacred and Terrible Air, it was written in Estonian but there are a couple of English fan translations. I enjoyed it. https://www.reddit.com/r/DiscoElysium/s/iVcX04yIRV

[-] p03locke@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 8 months ago
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[-] kellyaster@lemmy.world 3 points 8 months ago

Good bot.

[-] Jaysyn@kbin.social 3 points 8 months ago

Good.

this post was submitted on 18 Feb 2024
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