Disco Elysium Studio Lays Off Employees 2 Months After Its New Game's Release
ZA/UM hoped for better commercial success. Did the drama with ousted creators affect sales?
ZA/UM
ZA/UM made a name for itself with its hit RPG Disco Elysium, but its success did nothing to keep the team behind it together. Now, the studio has laid off 32 workers just 2 months after the release of ZERO PARADES: For Dead Spies, an espionage RPG very similar to its main title in style and gameplay. The reason is simple: despite a positive reception, the game failed to sell enough units:
"Today, we are sharing difficult news. While ZERO PARADES: For Dead Spies was released to critical acclaim, its commercial performance has not enabled us to sustain a studio of our current size," ZA/UM explained. "We have served redundancy or at-risk notices impacting up to 32 of our colleagues across all departments at ZA/UM Studio. Their work has made a lasting difference and left its mark on ZERO PARADES: For Dead Spies, and the studio as a whole."
ZA/UM
But what's the reason behind poor sales? This one is pretty obvious: the studio turned Disco Elysium fans, its main target audience, against itself when its leadership ousted the key creators.
If you missed the drama, here's the gist: in 2021, ZA/UM fired its lead designer Robert Kurvitz, writer Helen Hindpere, and lead artist Aleksander Rostov. In 2022, Kurvitz and Rostov accused investor Tõnis Haavel and CEO Ilmar Kompus of fraudulently obtaining control of ZA/UM. Fans were enraged and took the ousted devs' side, which most likely affected ZERO PARADES: For Dead Spies sales.
Since then, former DE creators opened 3 new studios – Longdue, Dark Math Games, and Summer Eternal – but the hate is still there, and ZA/UM knows it, as the company doesn't allow comments on its X/Twitter post. Still, you don't need to search hard to find what players think.
"Zero parades likely failed to perform to their desired financial standards because the key audience that would've given it a chance were disco elysium fans - an audience already primed to hate za/um and too principled to give them money for a game that is built on what was stolen from disco elysium," said Bluesky user tanuki ningen.
ZA/UM
The saddest part of the whole mess is that management might be at fault, but it's the developers who suffer the consequences.
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