I’m just asking them to redirect a tiny bit of that anger they feel for Kurvitz towards the intrigues that made sure that we might never get a worthy successor to Disco Elysium; the game that singlehandedly convinced me that our culture industry might once in a blue moon produce something that is actually… good. And not just neuron activation 10-hour gaming session slash escapism good, but genuinely valuable. It saddens me that this vast world of Elysium that has been nurtured in its creator’s heads for two decades was only able to take its first infant steps before it may now be shut down for good.

Disco Elysium, Kurvitz wrote, was always meant to be just a small introduction to the world of Elysium, and I fear that we will not see it expanded ever again, or that its successor will be made under people who legally own Disco Elysium, but not the grand, cosmic scale and the thousand-year long history of Elysium that, for most of its parts, still only exists in its creators’ heads.

Disco Elysium worked because they made sure that this vast world spirit was expressed in all of the game’s tiniest parts. And that is why Disco Elysium 2 just won’t work without Robert, Helen and Rostov – because they are major part of the iceberg whose tiny tip we see in Disco Elysium. The remaining ZA/UM employees, I am sure, are amazing, talented people, but even exceptional writers like Argo Tuulik can’t make up for the fact that Disco Elysium’s philosophy, history and, most exceptionally, its political rigor and willingness to offend will definitely not make a comeback in the polished commodity that this kind of successor would be.

“So far, we’ve only managed to show you a tiny, insignificant corner of it: the district of Martinaise in Revachol West, on Insulinde. I cannot begin to tell you how introductory it is. (“Disco Elysium” means “I learn Elysium”). It’s small. A matchbox world. It’s all we had money for.”

I want to make one more point before we wrap it up, maybe the most essential of them all. I already talked about the asymmetry of having such a strong and emotional moral verdict about Kurvitz’ person but nothing of the sort for Kompus and his allies. But why exactly isn’t there one? Let’s listen to the video’s conclusion about the legal situation:

“Don’t get me wrong, I absolutely appreciate that this is something that needs to go through the courts, and if anything illegal happened, as Robert and the others believe, that has to be made right. Has Disco Elysium been stolen from some of its original creators? That’s a question we are hopefully gonna see answered in court at some point. Although, even then, I do worry there’ll never be an entirely satisfying answer. If something illegal is proven to have happened, that’s one thing. But what if that’s not the case? How are you meant to feel if no laws were broken, but Kurvitz and Rostov didn’t fully understand what they’d given away?”

Before I try to answer this question, I want to emphasize that there shouldn’t be a chance for what Kompus & co. did to be legal. Kompus claims that Kurvitz approved of the sale of shares and the creation of the IP company, which would make it legal. However, when Chris asks Kurvitz, he denies giving his approval and having had any knowledge of it at all. And when he asked Kompus for proof - an email, a letter, any paper trail, anything, he says that there is none.

So why does Chris make it sound like there’s a good chance of all of this being completely fine and legal? Why does the video end in such an open way where there’s no conclusion except, of course, Kurvitz being a jerk? But, let’s get back to what Chris proposes as a conclusion.

“Has Disco Elysium been stolen from some of its original creators? That’s a question we are hopefully gonna see answered in court atsome point. Although, even then, I do worry there’ll never be an entirely satisfying answer. If something illegal is proven to have happened, that’s one thing. But what if that’s not the case? How are you meant to feel if no laws were broken, but Kurvitz and Rostov didn’t fully understand what they’d given away?”

Yes, what then? What if the court decides that all of this was legal? Are Kurvitz and co. to blame then, because they were a bunch of brokies who didn’t have the capital to fund their own game and thus predictably fell prey to the schemes of the economically powerful? Who now didn’t steal but legally claimed their life’s work? Would that outcome just be a very normal, politically neutral mishap without any need for further scrutiny or even moral deliberation?

All of this is really funny to me. People Make Games regularly takes strong stands against classism in the videogame industry (“Videogames have a class problem”) but then seems to just brush off the clearly class-based conflict at the core of this situation.

Because what do they think creates classism if not the sheer right of economic power, in all of its court-sanctioned legality? Why do they so willingly hand over the responsibility to judge the situation to the mechanisms that created it in the first place? Do they say that it is okay to claim an artist’s lifework if you have capital and the ability to manoeuvre it through the enigmatic loopholes of financial regulations? These structures are exactly what facilitates class power, or, if you prefer: the right of the economically strong.

Ilmar Kompus can be so relaxed and smug because he knows that what he did might actually lie perfectly within the rules of the game, or at least within its equally legal grey zones. And somehow for PMG, this potential legality seems to relieve him of any personal accusations like the ones they attacked Kurvitz with. Instead, the video proposes that the courts will judge this case and that if anything illegal happened, it will be made right.

As if their whole channel didn’t revolve around scandals in the videogame industry that were in most cases perfectly legal but still outrageous. It would have been insulting to end these videos with “well, the courts will figure it out”, because they clearly didn’t. Why did they always take a stand there, but only now delegate their ability to judge to the system that enabled figures like Kompus and Haavel in the first place? If you surrender your moral verdict to the laws of financial capital, you are simply on the side of capital, on the side of the economic strongmen who bully the people who make games.

I had basically finished this video when I stumbled across a blog post by Martin Luiga, another ZA/UM founding member and temporary ZA/UM employee. And despite him admitting that he is not on good terms with Kurvitz, he writes… this:

“In short, Robert was fired from the company whose heart and seed he was due to claims of ‘creating a toxic workplace environment’. Having worked at the company remotely in the summer of 2021 I can say things were truly not all right at the company, but I would say it is much more plausible that the toxic environment was created instead by the upper management and then blamed on Robert. I have seen a similar situation before. The idealist workaholic does not pay attention to people’s psychological needs much as the conspirator does and thus, he will at most times be outplayed. It reminds me of the Stalin and Trotsky situation, in which Trotsky felt relatively safe due to his high intellect, hard-working personality and being loved by the people, while not paying attention to the relations with other Communist Party members, while Stalin knew that those were the most important relations. Of course we also know that these same Communist Party members paid very dearly for falling prey to that smooth criminal. The price that Trotsky had to pay was of course the Abel’s price. He had something better than the others. Namely, talent and love. This is ultimately why he had his head bashed in. What happened to Robert was what happens to most talented people that get any recognition in our age — he got manipulated by psychopaths. Robert trusted the people that got him fired completely before they got him fired. He thought they were his friends.”

If you can bear another deep dive, I highly recommend this video by Stushi who had very similar qualms with the PMG investigation and goes into it in more length than I did. I linked it in the video description. There you can also find Kurvitz’ Outro, the Mark Fisher essay and Luiga’s Blog post. Another link obviously leads you to the PMG documentary.

I want to end this video by emphasizing that I am still a huge fan of their channel. They do amazing work and I think I watched every single one of their videos. Their Disco Elysium documentary too is, as I said, an enormous achievement of investigative videogame journalism and you should definitely watch it. And even though I disagree with the conclusion of that particular video, I still genuinely hope that they win the Creator Award and that next time, they will be as hard on criminals and the structures that enable them as they are on the People who Make Games.

Note that the video is deliberately and openly biased and that you are very free to disagree. In any case, let me know what you think! If you want to vote for PMG on the Games Awards Discord, you can do it here: https://discord.gg/thegameawards

Earlier this year, People Make Games published a huge investigative documentary about Disco Elysium and the allegation that the intellectual property rights to the game and its successor were stolen from its original creators. Last week they were nominated for Best Creator of the Year by The Game Awards. That’s the same show that awarded Disco Elysium in 2019.

Their nomination reminded me of the mixed experience I had watching the documentary and I want to take this opportunity to argue that, even though their video on Disco Elysium is among the highest quality, highly ambitious pieces of investigative videogame journalism out there, it also falls short at places that matter a lot, and I think it doesn’t do the game, its creators, or their channel justice.

The video by People Make Games investigates the ownership conflicts around Disco Elysium. They interview the accused CEO and ZA/UM majority shareholder (that’s the studio that made Disco Elysium), current ZA/UM employees, and three founding creators of the game, including the creative lead, Robert Kurvitz.

Helen, Rostov and Robert were fired from the studio when Ilmar Kompus, through means of highly questionable legality and with the help of the known financial fraudster Tõnis Haavel, acquired a majority share in ZA/UM and, probably behind Kurvitz’ back, also created a new company that holds the intellectual property rights for the Disco Elysium successor.

Now, Kurvitz is in the process of losing the rights to his life’s work, while we are losing the prospect of ever playing a worthy Disco Elysium Successor. The more accurate version of this is obviously their video itself, which you should definitely check out. It does a great job at mapping the situation and for most of its parts, I have nothing but praise for it.

So, what went wrong? Let’s frontload the more obvious observations: The video was way harder on Kurvitz for wanting to create a Disco Elysium successor outside of the grasp of financial criminals, than it was on those financial fraudsters themselves. Not a fraction of the genuine anger that Chris showed towards Kurvitz for wanting to leave a horrible environment was directed at those who created that environment in the first place.

The video concludes with Kurvitz being displayed as a bully, as being “outrageous” and “massively disrespectful”, while the person who certainly is among the single most destructive people in the whole gaming industry gets away as unscathed as his allies, without any kind of moral verdict. In the first interview with Kompus, the CEO and majority shareholder, Chris patiently lets him tell his own story of how a franchise worth millions and the lifework of passionate artists just kinda ended up in his hands, and how he, in his newly acquired position of power, had to fire Robert, Rostov and Helen for workplace toxicity and their lack of contribution.

I will go into these apparent reasons later, but this was at a time when Chris was already told how, shortly before the firing, Kompus and his criminal friends misused company funds (that were supposed to finance the sequel) to increase their own shares in the studio. It was also at a time when he already knew that improper workplace conduct was used as a reason for firing Kurvitz right after he started asking questions about shady proceedings in the company and demanded insight into essential financial documents.

How is it then that Chris, without any sense of irony, repeats Kompus’ claims to Kurvitz and then gets genuinely angry at him for denying these allegations of toxicity? Why does he find that “outrageous”, but not actual crimes, or Kompus dismissing them? Especially since a lot of the concrete allegations against Kurvitz are either not confirmed by the rest of the staff or, in the case of alleged sexist behaviour, outright dismissed by its supposed victim.

“Stop using my name and gender to advance your agenda. It has nothing to do with standing up for women – it uses gender in a deeply cynical matter for personal gain.”

Now, Kurvitz did leave some damage behind when he distanced himself from the studio after publishing the base game in 2019. Many of the current ZA/UM employees that were interviewed had their qualms with Kurvitz for leaving them pretty much alone with the Final Cut, for being unclear to them about the studio’s future, and ultimately for being willing to leave them behind while he tried to realize his dream for the Disco Elysium successor.

“What he tends to do with the next project is to work on it for the next seven years and for that he is going to need three people, two writers and Rostov as the artist.”

Leaving behind people who trusted Kurvitz’ leadership and who put their heart and overtime too into Disco Elysium just as much as he did, is unfair and reckless. The ZA/UM employees have all right to be disappointed and angry. Kurvitz did apologize for that in some extent in the video and acknowledges his privilege of being able take time off when others couldn’t. And like Chris, I too would have liked Kurvitz to apologize in a less abstract way; however, I also understand that the documentary will be used in court to document every single one of his personal shortcomings ever to use them against him.

So I think it is essential to ask: What exactly did Kurvitz distance himself from? Why did he desire a break from the previous corporate structures to create a new environment for the Disco Elysium sequel, even before he knew about all that shady stuff going on?

One reason was to regain creative freedom. Kurvitz and Rostov were demoted from their respective creative lead positions in writing and art. These roles have been gradually wrestled away from them, and Kurvitz did not want his project and the world he created to be at the complete mercy of the new directors.

One other reason were the working conditions. Kurvitz, together with his friends and colleagues, all suffered under the relentless crunch that was ordered by investors and the executive level. Working extreme overtime for years without breaks have left them with permanent damage to their mental health, leaving them burnt out, in mental institutions, disabled, in rehab, or at least in therapy.

Additionally, Helen, and I’m sure it was the case for many others too, was also deprived of other basic worker’s rights through illegal employment tactics. So I was left to wonder – why is none of that considered “bully behaviour”, “toxicity” or “not always pleasant”, but Kurvitz fleeing from that environment is? The video has a tendency of just naturalizing power exerted by the side of capital, be it inhumane workplace conditions or shady financial practices that rob artists of their past and future work.

For example, is it really so hard for Chris to say a simple thing like “financial criminals are not good people”, like he quotes here from Kurvitz’ letter? In a letter that he thinks is “outrageous” and “massively disrespectful” because it distracts from what he perceives as the problem at hand. But I wonder what really distracts from the problem at the core of all of this, from the crimes that poisoned the whole studio and brought all that misery to both Kurvitz and all other workers at ZA/UM in the first place.

In the letter that Chris quoted and that you can read fully in the PMG video, Kurvitz wrote about “Exiting the Vampire Castle”. And while it works perfectly fine as an intuitive metaphor for a group of creatives wanting to leave the grasp of finance capital, it is also the title of an essay by Mark Fisher who coined that phrase. I recommend you read it in full, even though some parts have aged badly.

I will however quote one paragraph: “The first law of the Vampires’ Castle is: individualise and privatise everything. While in theory it claims to be in favour of structural critique, in practice it never focuses on anything except individual behaviour. Some of these working-class types are not terribly well brought up, and can be very rude at times. Remember: condemning individuals is always more important than paying attention to impersonal structures. The actual ruling class propagates ideologies of individualism, while tending to act as a class.”

And isn’t it a prime example of this class solidarity that you see surrounding the studio’s financial affairs. It’s an enormous feat by the team of PMG to have broken it down so clearly. Which is why I cannot comprehend why they chose for the rest two thirds of the video to focus exclusively on Kurvitz’ personal shortcomings. It’s disproportional. I get that Chris can’t exactly force a statement about the shareholder situation from the current employees because their livelihoods are on the line and they just saw three of their former colleagues getting fired after poking their noses into their bosses’ affairs.

But it is still not only disproportionate, but also two separate things. You just cannot weigh Kurvitz being a jerk and taking time off against the major financial fraud that would have happened completely independent of Kurvitz’ personality disposition anyways. And yet the video ends with “well, neither side is innocent”, “it’s complicated”, and most importantly a suddenly very emotional “Kurvitz is a horrible person”, which concludes the video and retroactively shapes its whole vibe.