“The mask has slipped from the face of capital. What remains at ZA/UM is a cold, careless company where managers wage war against their own creatives, where artistry is second to property, and where corporate strategy is formed by an arrogant disdain for their own audience.”
Yep, this dude sure did work on Disco Elysium. Seriously, excellent interview, well worth a read.
Za/Um is dead (has been for a while, this is just the first sign of rigour mortis), but I’ll be paying attention to where these people end up.
Does anybody know if the creatives who left or were fired are making their own studio? Because I would love to continue supporting those guys.
This game came out of nowhere for me and blew my mind.
There is hope that some other new company might form from the ashes. Game companies go through cycles of this all the time.
Hell, just look at what happened with Second Wind. Not exactly a game company, but a similar situation.
Gaming has the purest opportunities for employers to say “you’re all fired,” and employeers to just carry on without the employer.
It’s not like there’s a factory.
Nothing in this article surprises me as someone who had followed this a while, but it was a good read all the same and it’s always interesting to read first hand accounts.
What a deeply depressing state of affairs.
