Martin Luiga, Founding Member of Studio ZA/UM and Editor of PC Gamer’s 2019 Game of the Year and Top 100 Chart Toppers (opens in new tab)Disco Elysium announced the “dissolution of the ZA/UM Cultural Association” through a post. Moderate (opens in new tab) (First discovered by an independent journalist Nibel (opens in new tab) on Twitter).
Luiga has described ZA/UM’s “cultural association” as different from the company, with Disco Elysium’s lead designer Robert Kurvitz, writer Helen Hindpere, and art director Aleksander Rostov reluctantly phasing out the company at the end of 2021. claims to have left the company.
Luiga argues that ZA/UM as a cultural project “no longer represents the spirit on which it was founded”. Luiga believes ZA/UM was successful, explaining that “most of the mistakes we made were accidental and dictated by the socio-cultural context we were thrown into.”
“For a while it was beautiful,” concludes Luiga.
In response to comments on the post, Luiga appears to be blaming ZA/UM’s investors for ZA/UM’s changing personality and the departure of key team members. Luiga also admits that he is not sure ZA/UM would have been able to raise the money without the contribution of these investors.
Luiga signs off on the post as writing from “The Tallinn Inpatient Treatment Center of the 9th Ward Psychiatric Clinic”. Tallinn, the capital of Estonia, is where ZA/UM first came together. I don’t know if the signature of the place really shows Luiga’s current state or if it’s a very dark joke.
Luiga, Kurvitz, Hindpere, and Rostov were members of the punk collective that eventually became Studio ZA/UM, as outlined in various interviews and the Disco Elysium artbook. Kurvitz and Hindpere in particular were the driving force behind the game’s praised script, and Rostov’s impressionist style of art remains his one of the game’s defining hallmarks.
We have reached out to Studio ZA/UM for comment and will update this story when we hear back.
