Disco Elysium studio ZA/UM has unionized. In an interview with GamesIndustry.biz, representatives of the studio's new Workers' Alliance, as well as company president Ed Tomaszewski, announced the formation of the union and its voluntary recognition by studio management. The announcement comes as ZA/UM has finally started showing off its second game, the upcoming spy RPG Zero Parades, set to release in 2026.
"The more I've worked here, the more I've realised that what we have is a unique makeup of people, and the union is a large effort to solidify that," said union representative and UI/UX designer Declan Keane. "Instead of thinking about what the next year will look like, we'll be working together, taking what we've learned already and doubling down on that. I want to play the games that this team makes."
"We can exercise our legal rights should we need to," explained union rep and community manager Poppy Ingham. "But mostly so we can try and have the studio work as a collaborative project between the workers and management. We like being here. We want to continue being here. So let's try and get a seat at the table in the big management meetings."
The Workers' Alliance is organized through the Independent Workers Union of Great Britain, with protection and representation primarily extended to ZA/UM employees in the UK. Ingham noted, however, that the union's meetings are open to their colleagues based in Tallinn, Estonia, and Porto, Portugal.
ZA/UM management has voluntarily recognized the union, a contrast with other instances of labor organizing in the industry that were met by fierce resistance. QA workers at Raven Software, whose walkouts three years ago sparked a wave of union activity in the industry, have only just ratified their first contract with Microsoft.
"When we heard that the workforce was having discussions about unionizing, what we did as a management team was come together to talk about that," ZA/UM president Ed Tomaszewski told Eurogamer. "And when we did talk about it, it was clear that recognizing a union was core to our values as a studio, to be providing fair working practices."
Both Tomaszewski and Ingham contested the characterization of ZA/UM as a "cold, careless company where managers wage war against their own creatives" from former ZA/UM writer Dora Klindžić.
Klindžić, along with Disco Elysium writer Argo Tuulik, were part of a 24-person mass layoff in February 2024 following the cancellation of a Disco Elysium spinoff codenamed X7. Ingham noted, however, that she "wouldn't want to comment on Dora's lived-in experience, because it's very, very different to my experience."
Speaking to PC Gamer for a June 2024 report on X7's development, Klindžić, Tuulik, and 10 other current and former ZA/UM employees described a studio that had struggled with a rapid expansion from 30 to around 100 people after the success of Disco Elysium. ZA/UM was then rocked by the acrimonious departure of key, senior talent, including setting creator Robert Kurvitz. In the following years, a Disco Elysium sequel and sci-fi RPG project led by Disco Elysium producer Kaur Kender were canceled, with focus shifting to X7 and two projects now revealed to be Zero Parades and Disco Elysium Mobile.
X7 was characterized as having a confused, stifled development process with no preproduction period and unclear leadership—Klindžić and Tuulik pitched the project and at times took on project lead responsibilities, but were never formally designated as such and clashed with formal project leads eventually assigned to the project. Despite these difficulties, a build of X7 was well-received in an internal company showcase at the end of 2023, but the project was still canceled two months later.
In a note on the size of ZA/UM, Ingham described the company as being reduced to "between 40 and 60 staff" following the 24-person redundancy caused by X7's cancellation, which Sports Illustrated's (now seemingly discontinued) games vertical GLHF described as a quarter of the company. ZA/UM appears to have rehired back up to "around 90" employees.
ZA/UM's current project, Zero Parades, is a spy RPG in a similar style to Disco Elysium, with primarily exploratory, dialogue-driven gameplay, skills that speak to the player, and a more immediate, confrontational riff on Disco Elysium's Thought Cabinet. I was intrigued by a first look at gameplay earlier this year, but am also concerned it could be playing things too safe vis-à-vis Disco Elysium.
Departed writers Klindžić and Tuulik have announced a limited edition art book/essay collection/dev diary to formally announce the first game of their new studio, Summer Eternal. It's set to ship next summer, and looks pretty neat. Red Info, the studio of Disco Elysium artist Aleksander Rostov and writers Helen Hindpere and Robert Kurvitz, has yet to announce what it is working on.
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