A new report detailing the drama behind the three Disco Elysium spiritual successors all simultaneously announced last month has outlined a convoluted web of connections, fallouts, and legal action, suggesting the beloved RPG’s legacy remains as messy as ever.
Disco Elysium’s original developer ZA/UM was, of course, at legal loggerheads with various former team members for quite some time; but while ZA/UM has said those lawsuits are now resolved, it seems drama has continued to swirl around those involved, even as they move onto other ventures. Those ventures include new projects at Dark Math Games and Longdue, two UK-based studios comprised of former Disco Elysium developers, who both announced Disco Elysium spiritual successors back in October. It also leads us to Argo Tuulik – one of the original writers on Disco Elysium and a key creative on ZA/UM’s cancelled Disco Elysium spin-off X7 – who followed up those announcements by revealing he’d also co-founded a new studio, Summer Eternal, with former ZA/UM developer Dora Klindžić.
And now a report by IGN’s Wesley Yin-Poole has delved deeper into the tangle of the three new studios, laying out the financial links between the two UK-based teams (Longdue founder Riaz Moola is also an investor in Dark Math Games), and revealing Tuulik and Klindžić both previously worked at Dark Math – as director and narrative director on the recently announced XXX Nightshift – later at Longdue. It’s fascinatingly convoluted stuff.
IGN reports Tuulik and Klindžić both departed Dark Math this July after the company elected not to renew Tuulik’s contract due to “creative differences”. Tensions are said to have come to a head after Tuulik claimed Dark Math boss Kaur Kender (who was also previously embroiled in a bitter legal dispute with ZA/UM over the ownership fo the Diso Elysium IP) had shown him – and other staff members – naked photos of his ex-wife. Speaking to IGN, Kender disputed the claim, saying the woman – who was to serve as inspiration for characters in XXX Nightshift – was wearing a bikini in some photos, and was fully clothed in others. Dark Math, meanwhile, told IGN it would “not be commenting on the past”.