Disco Elysium studio ZA/UM is ready to put off round 1 / 4 of its employees and has additionally cancelled a Disco Elysium enlargement, in keeping with a brand new report.
Sports Illustrated’s GLHF says that in keeping with its sources, the developer plans to put off round 24 workers, making up roughly 1 / 4 of its workforce.
It additionally claims that the cancelled venture, codenamed X7, was going to be a standalone enlargement for Disco Elysium.
According to the report, ZA/UM president advised employees that X7 was nonetheless “one to 2 years away from completion” and will presumably have taken up “extra effort and time that Disco Elysium did”.
The reported layoffs would largely have an effect on employees who have been engaged on X7, but it surely’s mentioned they will even have an effect on “non-development groups” and people engaged on different initiatives.
GLHF’s supply says that is the third venture in three years that ZA/UM has both cancelled or suspended, together with the Disco Elysium sequel and a brand new sci-fi IP.
The information is the newest chapter in a studio that has had its fair proportion of controversy, most notably with a string of explosive allegations made in late 2022 by former Disco Elysium builders and the house owners of the studio that fired them.
In November 2022, Disco Elysium sport director Robert Kurvitz and artwork director Aleksander Rostov claimed that after an Estonian firm known as Tütreke OÜ acquired a majority shareholding within the firm, they “have been shortly excluded from each day operations”, their “employment was terminated” and their “entry to the corporate’s data was shut off”.
They then alleged that Tütreke OÜ acquired the studio “by fraud” by illegally taking cash from ZA/UM itself and utilizing it to purchase its majority stake.
ZA/UM then responded by denying accusations of fraud, and mentioned that a number of workers had been dismissed as a consequence of “egregious misconduct”.
“While we’re assured that ZA/UM will prevail in court docket as soon as all of the info are heard, we imagine it’s mandatory to handle baseless claims and falsehoods, if solely to rightly defend ZA/UM and defend our workers,” the studio added on the time.
