Tuulik even had a message for his former colleagues (“comrades”) at ZA/UM, including Kurvitz and Rostov:
“To all other former respected comrades (Kurvitz, Rostov, everyone) – long time no hear, but we would love for you to join the struggle as well: time to roll up our sleeves and start building communism!”
I don't really remember that tune coming out of Tuulik when he was still holding on to ZA/UM during the documentary lol.
Pretty big shift from meekly suggesting that maybe Kurvitz could get a license to keep writing in the Elysium world.
But whatever, they are making video games, time will tell if it will be interesting or not.
Well yeah, but it's more about the principle of it, he's supposed to be a ZA/UM old guard and that was part of his value in being in the documentary, so it's not as if being fired should be a radicalizing moment.
Basically I think he appears a bit too flexible, the radical rhetoric comes off leaning more towards branding than deep principle.
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ZA/UM itself, or it's shambling corpse.
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Red Info. The company Kurvitz and Rostov founded after they left ZA/UM, funded by Netease. Unfortunately we don't know much about what they are doing, other than that they have a project. Understandably the legal battle for the rights of Disco Elysium probably came first.
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Longdue. Unfortunately we know the least about this studio, just some concept art and some PR speak.
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Dark Math. This studio has a trailer for a game that's um... a little familiar, it's also associated with Kaur Kender who was one of the people involved in the shenanigans that went down at ZA/UM. Article
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and now Summer Eternal, who don't have a trailer or proof of concept or pretty much anything except a manifesto (and are therefore the true inheritors of the crown, imo). That said, they're explicitly set up as a worker's co-op with a structure that's designed to prevent a hostile takeover, so it seems some hard lessons have been learnt
The scuttlebutt is that ZA/UM's non-compete clause for their ex-staff expired today, which is the reason for all these announcements, but that's speculation that can't be corroborated so take it with a pinch of salt.
thx! :) oh the non-compete clause thing would make a lot of sense, i was wondering why it was all happening so close to each other. Summer eternal does seem promising!
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please let this happen