this post was submitted on 18 Feb 2024
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I know this is an unpopular thing to say, but it's... more complicated than that. Lots of people worked on the game, and most of them stayed at ZA/UM after the lead creative guy got screwed over. The people at the top now are pure bloodsucking parasites and don't deserve your money, but saying that Robert Kurvitz was solely responsible for the game is unfair to the dozens of people who also poured their hearts and souls into the game, and don't ever want anything to do with him again.
Sure, and many people forget Helen Hindpere (second lead writer) and Aleksandr Rostov (art director) also left with Kurvitz. And even then, despite Rostov being responsible for the overall visual style the Thought Cabinet was painted by Anton Vill, and I don't know for sure who made the portraits/skill depictions but it might also have been him (though they are more in the style of Rostov - see the 3 archetype paintings which were created by Rostov).
Look, I know it was a collaborative effort, but even disregarding the obvious centrality of these three people to the project the issue isn't really about that. Kurvitz has been working on this world together with his friends since they were teenagers. It's clearly his life's work. Just because he was allegedly a shitty boss doesn't mean he deserves to have the IP stolen from under him.
Sure, they were all absolutely important to the game, and that matters, but saying Kurvitz, his girlfriend, and his best friend all left together when no one else wanted to isn't really impressing me with how great of a person he is to work for. I don't think he deserved anything that happened to him, but I am absolutely certain that the only thing holding the studio together was a collective desire to see the game finished from everyone involved. There was never going to be a Disco Elysium 2. There is no force on Earth that could have held that studio together with all the talented people involved past the release of the game. It sucks that the scum of the Earth got control of what's left of it, and it sucks that Kurvitz lost the rights to his life's work, but in the end it doesn't actually change much other than one asshole getting like 60% of the residuals on sales of Disco Elysium. Which to be clear is a bad thing. I'm not happy about the situation. This was all lightning in a bottle though. It was never going to happen again.
I don't know what their personal relations has to do with their creative accomplishments, and it seems you are arguing a different point than I am so I'm confused. I'm not really concerned with how Kurvitz was as a boss and leader, I wasn't there so I couldn't possibly have anything to comment regarding the allegations (though from reading the interviews with the devs who were fired just the other day it seems the problems with the toxic work environment endured way past his exit so he can't have been the sole cause unlike what the corporate leaders claimed).
I do agree that it was lightning in a bottle and unlikely to happen again, but the state of affairs do change more than who gets to collect residual income from DE sales over the years: Kurvitz and co. are not allowed to do further work in the world of Elysium. Sure, if the allegations were true he would maybe not be able to hold another video game development team together, but perhaps he might write another novel?
Regardless of what you think of him and his friends, they together created the world of Elysium over the course of several decades, which is what makes it so rich and deep. What makes me most sad is that they're locked out of further exploring it, and subsequently so are we.
I don't think it has anything to do with their creative accomplishments. I think it needed clarifying that no one he is not personally involved with outside of work wanted to continue working for him. Frankly you claiming to be confused by that is concerning to me.
There were six writers, and dozens of other people, for most of the development of Disco Elysium. Why would it be any better for just three of them to get the rights? This was always going to be a mess where people got screwed in ways they didn't deserve. I can say that Kurvitz ended up being the one that got most screwed and that genuinely sucks, but also there was no way it was going to turn out any better. Those things aren't mutually exclusive.
As for Kurvitz in the future, I don't know how this will turn out, and it's true that he can't write any direct sequels involving any of the characters or locations explicitly in the game, but basically nothing else about the game is even really copywritable. He can still write stories in the same world with the serial numbers filed off. I don't know if he will. He might spend the rest of his life being bitter about what was stolen from him, but if he wants to go back to what he's good at he always has that option.
I was under the impression that ZA/UM owns the rights for not just the game but the world of Elysium, though I am not a copyright lawyer or anything so I don't know what exactly is copywritable.
As far as I know the world of Elysium was created and developed as a setting for a D&D game Kurvitz was DMing for his friend group starting from his teens. That group of people built it together over two decades. Kurvitz also wrote a novel set in that world, which released in 2013. The setting already existed and was pretty developed when work started on Disco Elysium the video game. If you want to get into the weeds I agree that people like Hindpere and Rostov have less of a claim on the IP than people like Martin Luiga and Argo Tuulik who were part of that campaign DMed by Kurvitz. Tuulik was the last writer who worked on DE remaining at ZA/UM, but he seems to have been fired the other day. The interview with him was a good read.
It's a sorry situation for everyone involved.
It is sad but unsurprising to hear that Tuulik was one of the people recently fired. I had almost kinda hoped the studio would move on and make non Elysium games eventually. There were still talented people there, and when you look into it most gaming companies are run by scum. It seems unlikely at this point that they'll even be able to do that though. It really just does exist to siphon money off Disco Elysium sales at this point, I think.
As for the copyright, yes, you are technically correct. Nothing can be set in that world. I'm also not a copyright lawyer, so take everything I say with a grain of salt, but from my understanding outside of the actual content of the game there's really not much that's copywritable outside of some names. If they just change the names and set a new story in a new city with new characters there's really not anything anyone can do to stop them. Even for the city they'd really just have to change the details. You can't copyright idea of a vaguely eastern European vaguely post-Sovietish sci-fi/fantasy city. Maybe they'd need to change one big thing revealed near the end that I don't want to talk about because of spoilers. This is all replying to someone who said they haven't played the game and don't want to be spoiled after all. Even for that they'd just have to change the name and some of the details of how it works though, I think. A lot of what makes it what it is is to vague to be copyrighted, I think.
I don't think it's as easy as just changing some names and moving on, mainly on a personal level. The attachment to this world has to be immense after all these years. I don't think Kurvitz and co. want to just make something set in a fantastical post-soviet setting, I think they want to work in Elysium specifically. At least that's how I would feel, were I in their shoes.
Second, there is so much detail in the world that both gives it character a and is most likely copywritable. They have to come up with new, legally distinct versions of the innocentic system, Dolores Dei, the Coalition, the >!pale!< and the isolas etc etc. I think it's much more likely they do something completely different than something akin to "legally distinct DE". Though if Kurvitz just ends up bitterly doing nothing but relapse on his alcoholism then that wouldn't surprise me either. Again, that's probably what I would do in his shoes.