The lead writer and artist, among other staff who made Disco what it was have been involuntarily forced out of the company.

Quote one of the former staff: "Imagine a kleptomaniac, if you will. Only that instead of stealing, say, "A Lolly pop", they take pains to manipulate dozens of people to steal, in the end, from themselves, just because they happen to be very proficient in that kind of an operation. It's what they always do, really. One of them was the first guy to be convicted for investment fraud in Estonia. All the same, idk if we would have managed to get the initial investment without these people."

Gaming companies always want more immediate profit instead of long term investment, which maybe shows the youth of our industry. You get a huge hit and the first thing you do is find ways to screw over the people who gave you that hit. Frustrating.

Didnt DE just sell the rights to making a tv show to Amazon?

https://www.destructoid.com/amazon-first-dibs-disco-elysium-film-tv-adaptation/

Doesnt this also kill hopes for a sequel (and unfortunately, sequels are contingent on people, not companies to be good) which hurts the IP?

There is no company loyalty. Don't expect most employers to stick by you if they want to trim down and you are expensive or they perceive the final outcome of your contributions to the company to be less than they pay you. I've learned that the hard way early in my career and I've done well ever since.

If you work for somebody, it should be strictly because the money upfront is good enough (not what they'll supposedly pay you in 2 years where you might no longer be there, what they are paying you right now) and the working conditions are not bad and perhaps, if you are lucky, you believe in the mission statement of your employer as well (irrespective of whether you remain employed there or not).

I work for a research center in a hospital, the money is ok (I'd probably get a 20k-40k pay bump in the private sector), the working conditions are ok (people are nice to me and they really respect my work, though the workload is a little insane more often than not), but the mission statement is through the roof (its a non-profit that setups genome research projects in the public sector and the tools I develop are open-source).

All that being said, I have no illusion that the moment I stop being incredibly useful (to the extent my salary indicates), I'll be shown the door (and this is a non-profit). I work for the now. Not for my security in 5 years time with the same employer. There is none. My attractiveness to plenty of other potential employers is my only long term job security.

If you find that brutal, advocate for a better safety net in the area where you live. I won't go into too much details here as that would be a political discussion.

Worse, it DOESN'T kill hopes for a sequel, except the sequel will be made by completely different people.

But there's a chance the former people will make a new IP heavily inspired on Disco Elysium that will beat the 'official' sequel from this company.
Example? Just look at Everspace, the spiritual successor of Galaxy on Fire series

[Dipping into Off Topic]
This is why I've found a mild appeal in governmental jobs. From what I've read of job stories, you cram yourself into a nook and you become part of the scenery.

Plus there's a variety of stable jobs you can work a foothold into or knit your own job security into. And for someone socially adverse/highly introverted like me, governmental jobs tend not to have cheerful idiots who will micromanage you to death. Plus there's no marketing, sales, or advertising teams.

Depends on the kind of government job. This one has more of a startup vibe actually.

We operate in a structure separate from the rest of the hospital and we're not unionized so a lot of the complacency that can be found elsewhere is absent in our team. We're not hospital staff. We're a research team with a narrower mandate. That was a problem at a lot of the other companies I worked at actually (except for my first one which unfortunately didn't pay that well). There was always some amount of jealousy and posturing and all I wanted to do was focus on the work (preferably as part of a smaller team, I enjoy design and programming a lot more than I enjoy talking).

This is the great thing about this job: nobody else currently in the team can do what I do as well as I do it (in operations) and given that I accept to be underpaid by about 20k-40k, there is no way they are gonna get someone else at my skill level (who can manage both the software part of automation and the lower level IT details of on-prem infrastructure) for my salary.

This gives me incredible leeway to get things done the way I want.

It's curious. There's been other members of the studio who seemingly stood in union with the studio to the point their PR agency RT'd the message. I'm sure more details will pop up unless there are NDAs in place...if that's the case you'll probably one get one very controlled telling of the story from the studio


Sad either way, but i'm sure the heads will form another studio and get layered in crowdfunding and investment. Disco was top notch

All because the masses have been conditioned to perceive feudalism as democracy.

Looks like ZA/UM not just fired Kurvitz but also want to sue him:
https://kotaku.com/disco-elysium-2-zaum-amazon-allegations-narrative-rpg-1849608540

True, the democratization of corporate control by its workforce could probably alleviate most of those issues, and imho, is a step in the right direction.

However, I don't think democracy is a silver bullet against all cases of mistreatment especially when the minorities and the weak are concerned (hence why for example, in many democracies, you have a judicial system that is at least partially independent and not directly answerable to the elected body).

I think a strong culture of tolerance & empathy, checks in the system and a social safety net that lives outside the corporate sphere at the state level are necessary supplements to democracy (corporate and otherwise).

Also, mandatory mental wellness checks. If we could weed out the sociopaths, psychopaths, and narcissists from the system, that'd solve a lot of issues too.

Is not the game companies. Is every single company in the IT world. What does it mean?

Ugh, thats one of the worst fates an IP can encounter, a sequel in name only. Pretty much the released straight-to-DVD of the video game world.

Even removing one writer can have a big impact on the story and it definitely loses its identity and rarely becomes a better product (Devil May Cry is the only example I can think of where changing the producer was beneficial).