ZA/UM Studio, the contentious developer on the coronary heart of years of bitter public and authorized disputes for the reason that launch of 2019’s acclaimed Disco Elysium, is to put off as much as 32 employees members “throughout all departments”, it has been introduced.
The information comes by way of a press release from ZA/UM, launched on the studio’s social media on Friday afternoon, which cited the “business efficiency” of religious successor Zero Parades: For Lifeless Spies as the important thing purpose. Gross sales, per ZA/UM, weren’t sufficient “to maintain a studio of our present dimension”.
The studio was final reported to have round 100 staff, as of October 2025, when its employees shaped the primary recognised online game builders’ union within the UK, represented by the Impartial Staff Union of Nice Britain. ZA/UM says it has “continued to seek the advice of and work with representatives of the ZA/UM Staff’ Alliance” all through the method.
The complete assertion from ZA/UM reads as follows:
Right now, we’re sharing troublesome information. Whereas Zero Parades: For Lifeless Spies was launched to important acclaim, its business efficiency has not enabled us to maintain a studio of our present dimension.
Now we have served redundancy or at-risk notices impacting as much as 32 of our colleagues throughout all departments at ZA/UM Studio. Their work has made an enduring distinction and left its mark on Zero Parades: For Lifeless Spies, and the studio as a complete.
All through this troublesome course of, now we have continued to seek the advice of and work with representatives of the ZA/UM Staff’ Alliance.
This adjustments the form of ZA/UM, however not its objective. Our inventive requirements stay unchained: we’ll persist.
To anybody at the moment hiring, please think about the colleagues leaving ZA/UM.
The response to the information has been extremely important throughout social media, undoubtedly because of the studio’s terribly controversial historical past.
“I really feel horrible for the employees,” wrote one remark on Bluesky from person Eimmy, “particularly since gamedev is absolute shit rn (I am not coming again until I completely need to). They deserve a protected and rewarding job. Sadly Zaum isn’t that place and it’ll fall in the end, since they poisoned the model for [the] majority of followers”.
Of these reacting to the publish by way of the quote perform – replies are turned off throughout each X and Bluesky – this is among the extra measured responses.
As for ZA/UM, it is a complicated story, with Disco Elysium’s sport director Robert Kurvitz and artwork director Aleksander Rostov accusing ZA/UM’s administration, specifically Ilmar Kompus and Tõnis Haavel, of gaining possession of the studio and its mental property fraudulently, and claiming that they have been “summarily fired and lower off from our life’s work” after they started asking for monetary information from ZA/UM’s new homeowners.
Kompas and Haavel in the meantime denied “any declare of monetary malfeasance or fraud” and in flip issued a press release detailing a sequence of allegations in regards to the fired staff, together with “not working in any respect for nearly two years whereas nonetheless being paid by the studio,” making a “poisonous work atmosphere”, and “makes an attempt to illegally promote to different gaming firms ZA/UM’s mental property.” Kurvitz responded to these allegations on the time to disclaim them, referring to the claims as “a last-minute push” designed to “create division between staff” and “bait us right into a public confrontation with the intention to direct consideration away from their suspected criminal activity.”
Through the years since, intensive reporting from Individuals Make Video games has harassed the complexity of the assorted disputes, with interviews featured within the two prolonged documentaries including additional to the claims made on both facet. Numerous authorized battles have ensued, a few of which dismissed or dropped, and but nonetheless contested verbally in tit-for-tat public statements issued from each events. In the meantime, at the very least 4 studios have been arrange by former Disco Elysium builders to make religious successors of assorted types – and these, too, have been dragged into additional authorized battles and disputes of their very own.
At ZA/UM, that is additionally not the primary spherical of layoffs the studio has made. In 2024 a Disco Elysium spin-off was reportedly cancelled and round 24 staff laid off by the developer, with but extra public statements issued within the aftermath, this time alleging a office “rife with crunch, burnout and battle.”
The results of all that is, as you’d count on, is a multitude of recriminations and livid sentiment – solely heightened by the deep irony of Disco Elysium’s anti-capitalist subject material – and one which appears unlikely to ever be absolutely untangled.
As for Zero Parades: For Lifeless Spies, the religious successor launched by ZA/UM simply two months in the past – which has robust similarities to Disco Elysium – has obtained excessive reward as a sport in itself. Alexis Ong, writing in Eurogamer’s five-star Zero Parades overview, described it as a sport of “bristling reactivity, woven into attractive prose and a constellation of characters huge and small, every a important texture within the material of a residing, respiration story,” and “the cumulative work of a inventive workforce on the prime of their sport.”
“It’s a narrative distillation of the acquainted right into a messy, painful journey that feels, at turns, cinematic and mundane, sharp and foolish – a fine-tuned caricature of humanity’s petty, poisoned psyche, a sport made with care, for under the best sickos.”
We have written this so many instances over latest years, however as with every case of builders hit with layoffs, Eurogamer needs all these impacted the perfect of luck for the long run.
