this post was submitted on 18 Feb 2024
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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.