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[mdkirby]

During conference season I was eagerly awaiting news of a new disco elyseum, or other title from Za/Um, I had also been half expecting that Sony might gobble them up to fill the western RPG niche they are lacking, and MS has been buying up left right and centre.

Neither happened.

Instead we hear about key staff members leaving...Now we have more info on why, and that they were infact fired for misconduct and harassment (and laziness)

https://nichegamer.com/disco-elysium-staff-fired-over-misconduct/

It was some pretty key people who would have had an outsized contribution to the success of Disco Elyseum, but sounds like they had barely done anything in the last 2 years, whilst being abusive to the rest of the team. If that's the case they were already somewhat deadweight for impact on a sequel, regardless of their sacking.

But does anyone have insight on how big a loss this actually is? How good are their remaining writers? How much did they contribute vs the lead? can they fill their shoes? Likewise for the art direction.

They are a relatively small team, can we expect continued greatness, or should we expect a lengthy wait for a new title, which will prove a shadow of their former selves?

One note tho is that if there had been a very toxic and chaotic work environment, it would definitely have set off red flags for Sony if they were eyeing them up. If they have cleaned house, then they may now be a much more attractive proposition.

 

[AV]

I'll sum up most of the replies you're going to get for this thread:

"Typical commies"

 

[Dreamin]

The game was awesome. I think whoever's responsible for the skill system with all the different aspects of the self did great work, the rest was cool but to me that's what made the game. Story, characters, visuals could all be hugely different and I'd still love that system so if they're still around I'm expectin a good game. Not sure if it could survive all the unecessary drama about politics or whatever review wise though.

 

[mdkirby]

I'll sum up most of the replies you're going to get for this thread:

"Typical commies"

Mix of Estonia and UK to be fair...I mean ur probably right about the comments, and it would be an appropriate in universe response too.

Tho my own experience of working with ex soviet baltic devs has been socialisty but good. ie crazy hard working, undervaluing of their own talent, terrible at negotiating what they should be paid, and be thankful of the little they were paid whilst breaking themselves over projects.

I do hope they pull their shit together to right the ship tho, just don't know enough about their internal team structure, size and involvement of other parties to know how realistic that is...someone else may have insights tho (beyond less than useful responses that may come lol)

 

[mdkirby]

The game was awesome. I think whoever's responsible for the skill system with all the different aspects of the self did great work, the rest was cool but to me that's what made the game to me. Story, characters, visuals could all be hugely different and I'd still love that system so if they're still around I'm expectin a good game. Not sure if it could survive all the unecessary drama about politics or whatever review wise though.

Yeah the great implementation of an RPG like skill tree was excellent, particularly for what was ostensibly a narrative adventure. Tho having got about half way through a second play through, chunks of it were quite illusory, with different skill paths, and choice paths having relatively minimal effects. I rarely play a game twice, but it felt like, or at least created the illusion that a second play through would potentially both play and narratively branch out quite differently...the effects tho were much more subtle, so I dropped the second run through.

Not that im surprised, AAA studios with massive budgets struggle with that, so expecting the world from a smaller budget indie was probably me asking too much