Disco Elysium studio ZA/UM is reportedly laying off a quarter of staff and cancelling an expansion

15.02.2024 - 18:15 / videogameschronicle.com / Chris Scullion / Disco Elysium

Disco Elysium studio ZA/UM is set to lay off around a quarter of its staff and has also cancelled a Disco Elysium expansion, according to a new report.

Sports Illustrated’s GLHF says that according to its sources, the developer plans to lay off around 24 employees, making up roughly a quarter of its workforce.

It also claims that the cancelled project, codenamed X7, was going to be a standalone expansion for Disco Elysium.

According to the report, ZA/UM president told staff that X7 was still “one to two years away from completion” and could possibly have taken up “more time and effort that Disco Elysium did”.

The reported layoffs would mostly affect staff who were working on X7, but it’s said they will also affect “non-development teams” and those working on other projects.

GLHF’s source says this is the third project in three years that ZA/UM has either cancelled or suspended, along with the Disco Elysium sequel and a new sci-fi IP.

The news is the latest chapter in a studio that has had its fair share of controversy, most notably with a string of explosive allegations made in late 2022 by former Disco Elysium developers and the owners of the studio that fired them.

In November 2022, Disco Elysium game director Robert Kurvitz and art director Aleksander Rostov claimed that after an Estonian company called Tütreke OÜ acquired a majority shareholding in the company, they “were quickly excluded from daily operations”,  their “employment was terminated” and their “access to the company’s information was shut off”.

They then alleged that Tütreke OÜ acquired the studio “by fraud” by illegally taking money from ZA/UM itself and using it to buy its majority stake.

ZA/UM then responded by denying accusations of fraud, and said that several employees had been dismissed due to “egregious misconduct”.

“While we are confident that ZA/UM will prevail in court once all the facts are heard, we believe it is necessary to address baseless claims and falsehoods, if only to rightly defend ZA/UM and protect our employees,” the studio added at the time.