The most promising Disco Elysium successor studio says workers must unite to topple Valve's 'digital fiefdom' of Steam

Gabe Newell in a Valve promotional video, on a yacht. — (Image credit: Valve software)

According to his biographer, Max Brod, Franz Kafka once postulated over lunch that our world wasn't much more than "a bad mood of God, a bad day." When Brod asked if, then, that meant there was room for hope—perhaps God's bad mood could end—Kafka replied "Oh, hope enough, infinite hope—just not for us."

Which is pretty much the vibe I get from the devs at worker-owned studio Summer Eternal, one of the many Disco Elysium successor companies that popped up in the wake of ZA/UM's fracturing. In a recent chat with VG247, the devs at the studio were asked if they saw much chance of conditions in the industry improving following a devastating couple of years of layoffs. Their answer? "I think this industry is finished. But fortunately for everyone, videogames are not."

The dev who said that was former Disco Elysium writer Dora Klindžić, and it should probably tell you something about both the state of the games industry and the general vibe at this studio in particular that hers was not the most alarming answer given by the team. Her comrade Aleksandar Gavrilović takes a more "accelerationist" view. Finally, the games industry has its own Sergei Nechaev.

"I myself ascribe to the accelerationist view that the only way to achieve better conditions is to enter crises which underline the contradictions of society and force us to remake the world," says Gavrilović. "Now, after tens of thousands of layoffs, the time seems right for game developers to stand up for their rights against systemic greed."

Which, I have to be honest, sounds more straightforwardly Marxist than "accelerationist" to me (and certainly not Nechaevist. That was a joke. Please do not email me to tell me I got Nechaev wrong). That society's contradictions—bourgeois vs proletarian, greedy games industry exec vs crunching dev—have to sharpen to a point that they can no longer be sustained, opening the way for change, is plain old dialectics.

Then again, maybe I'll take that back. Gavrilović says he's "eagerly awaiting a second crisis, one which would spotlight the largest structural issue in game development - the fact that one third of all PC revenue from all developers (from indies to AAA) is syphoned to digital fiefdoms."

Digital fiefdoms like who, you ask, as if you don't already know the answer? "Valve is the most egregious example," says Gavrilović. He hopes for a future where devs, not digital feudal lords, have more power, "but I lack the imagination to envision the replacement of Valve with a community owned alternative. That 'winter castle' will not fall as easily, but we should at least start openly discussing alternatives."

But Summer Eternal is starting small—hoping to start a prairie fire with a single spark—by setting itself up as a co-op and, in at least Gavrilović's case, trying to unionise other devs. "It’s true, Summer Eternal will not fix the games industry," says Klindžić "although as a byproduct of our operation we might generate a panacea for agriculture, astronomy, inaccurate bus timetables, those hoax messages that target your mom, local elections, and syphilis."

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One of Josh's first memories is of playing Quake 2 on the family computer when he was much too young to be doing that, and he's been irreparably game-brained ever since. His writing has been featured in Vice, Fanbyte, and the Financial Times. He'll play pretty much anything, and has written far too much on everything from visual novels to Assassin's Creed. His most profound loves are for CRPGs, immersive sims, and any game whose ambition outstrips its budget. He thinks you're all far too mean about Deus Ex: Invisible War.