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mortispoxi · 11 months

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After taking the time to really sit and process the roller coaster of information that was the recent People Make Games video about the drama surrounding Studio ZA/UM, I wanted to make this post to go over some of my thoughts that I had about the video. If you have not watched the video but are curious what people are saying about it or you have and you want to read someone else’s perspective, then I invite you to read through as I babble incoherently.

Overall, I thought it provided an interesting, in-depth look at the timeline of events leading up to Kurvitz, Rostov, and Hindpere’s dismissals while also giving us a proper inside scoop to the interpersonal relationships of both the former and current Studio ZA/UM employees. However, I do think the video has a couple of problems specifically with the way some of the information is presented on top of the fact that it loses focus partway through from the real issue which is the alleged fraud that took place by the investors to acquire the majority share within the company.

A big problem that I had with the video was the way in which Kurvitz behavior and final statement are disproportionately framed in the narrative. Now I am not about to go on a lengthy rant to dismiss everything Robert Kurvitz did to his friends during his time at the studio. In fact, the thing that I really liked about this video was how Chris Bratt, the writer and interviewer, holds no punches when it comes to the accusations of misconduct we heard from current Studio ZA/UM employees against him. Instead, I think it needs to be addressed that Bratt left out background context, whether intentionally or unintentionally I do not want to speculate, that could potentially explain what happened to everyone leading up to the expulsions to make Kurvitz appear far worse than how he might’ve been. I fully believe every word Argo Tuulik, Kaspar Tamsula, and Petteri Sulonen has said about working under Kurvitz and his inner circle so by piecing together all their statements to create a timeline of events the investors start to look far less innocent than how they portray themselves to be in the video.

It’s abundantly clear that Kurvitz was notoriously hard to work with. However, what’s also clear was the tremendous amount of stress everyone was under while also still being in the throes of burnout after working on the game nonstop for months. I think the investors (Kender, Haavel, and Kompus) purposefully set the team up for failure by creating impossible deadlines without informing the writers, approving Kurvitz and his inner circle to take time off while disallowing the others from taking theirs, and attempting to restructure the company in preparation to franchise Disco Elysium against Kurvitz wishes and thus he felt scared enough to push for his role to be de facto creative leader anywhere he could. What seems to be three full years of forcing everyone to crunch, miscommunicating when important deadlines were, setting impossible work standards to meet, and readying themselves to snatch more power within the company may have helped sow the seeds of animosity the writers began growing towards one another.

All of this is nothing new for those of us who have been keeping an eye on the drama from the start. We were told long in advance by the likes of Martin Luiga, who although left the project early on has been friends and worked alongside him for the better part of two decades, that Kurvitz possesses less than stellar leadership skills and that there was no merit in what the investors would end up accusing him of doing to warrant his dismissal. That confirmation was given long before the release of the PMG video and cements the idea in my mind that perhaps Kurvitz erratic behavior that was described by the current Studio ZA/UM employees was not the cause but rather a symptom of a much larger problem happening around him (i.e. a toxic work environment brought on by the investors using manipulation tactics to further stress and cause resentment amongst the collective). Yes, Kurvitz was at times uncooperative and dismissive towards his fellow employees, but this aspect of his character and the situation was played up to be a far greater problem in the PMG video than what the context suggests. I’m also inclined to believe this interpretation because Argo Tuulik, despite having legitimate, unresolved issues with his friend, does still regard Kurvitz very highly and even believes that he should still have artistic access to Elysium.

When you think about it from this perspective, it makes perfect sense as to why Kurvitz was acting erratically around his fellow coworkers who eventually lashed out at him. On top of Kurvitz’s subpar leadership skills, he clearly was rapidly losing control of the situation which caused a great amount of stress for everybody involved as he scrambled in every which way to hold onto his position within the studio. It does not surprise me when it’s admitted by Sulonen that Kurvitz was thinking of taking the source code to potentially start over with a newly founded company since the situation was rapidly deteriorating and everyone was getting more and more frustrated with him and his inner circle. The impossible working conditions they found themselves in was a pressure cooker for the animosity and resentment building within the disillusioned group. Clearly the investors made their workers run themselves ragged in order to divide everyone and make it easier for them to take advantage of Kurvitz’s now frequent outbursts to finally push him out of their way.

Everything that I’ve said above can easily be discerned from the context clues found in the interviews from the current and former ZA/UM members. Which if you think about it is an unfortunate statement because Bratt does not seem to register the complaints of mismanagement by the hands of the investors from either side and instead only points the spotlight at Kurvitz’s past transgressions. What I am describing is one of the major issues I have with the PMG video. The video talking about the ongoing legal battle to determine if corporate fraud took place seemed to disproportionately focus on the problems Kurvitz and his inner circle had with other team members and not issuing a public apology to his former colleagues. Now that doesn’t sound all too bad on paper, right? If Kurvitz apologized, it could help begin the healing process and make for a good closer for the video. Well, that’s where the problem comes into play because Kurvitz response to Bratt’s request for comment regarding what Tuulik, Tamsalu, and Sulonen said about his poor conduct should not come as a surprise to anyone who had been paying attention. In the video, Bratt hails the email Kurvitz sent back to him as arrogant and dismissive which he then uses to accuse him of not standing with his fellow workers in solidarity and not taking accountability for his actions. However, right at the start of his interview, Kurvitz informs Bratt that at the behest of his lawyers he does not want the full interview to be published as they are worried Studio ZA/UM might take something he said as an admission of guilt and use it against him in a court of law. Therefore, when asked to comment about what his former colleagues said about him, he fires back an email that basically says that he wants the focus to be on the thing that really matters, the lawsuits and the shady activities of the investors. Bratt, clearly not liking his response, decided to attack his statement even though had Kurvitz given PMG what they wanted he could potentially be incriminating himself. Whether he denies or fully understands that his actions hurt others, the way he responded is 100% justified and did not deserve the level of vitriol he got from both Bratt and the public. It seems like a double standard that Ilmar Kompus can deny answering a question by claiming he cannot comment due to the ongoing lawsuit during his interview but when Kurvitz does it for the exact same reasons he is attacked. Again, Kurvitz is fully responsible to rectify the hurt he caused others but legally he’s in the clear and Bratt seemed to purposely neglect that aspect of the ongoing narrative.

Now, I’m not about to pull a whole reddit conspiracy in my write up. I do believe Chris Bratt, who directed this video, went into this with the very best of intentions to tell the full story with an emphasis on the workers who were affected by the situation. However, the problems that I’ve listed above make me worry what will be the takeaway from someone who is only a casual observer of the ZA/UM situation. Personally, I have been following this from the beginning so I’ve had a lot of time to develop my own insight into things but that’s usually not the case for most people. What I’m concerned about is whether Bratt may have unintentionally furthered the investors narrative by pushing people’s focus away from themselves and onto Kurvitz who has largely had the support of fans and outside viewers up until this point. Studio ZA/UM as it stands is desperate for a leg up in the PR battle it’s had with Kurvitz since October 1st, 2022. They lost so much support once the announcement was made that Kurvitz and his inner circle had been terminated, and lost even more upon the release of collage mode, that it makes logical sense that they want more people to be on their side so when the time comes for the studio to announce another game their reviews and sales numbers won’t immediately be tanked by angry fans. So, the fact that this video seemingly only held its focus on the misgivings of Kurvitz closing statement and personality instead of what is actually being fought over, alleged corporate fraud and theft of IP, may have unwittingly handed the investors that distraction that they have been looking for. Since the release of this video, I’ve seen an unfortunate mix of people arguing over the ethics of the situation, those switching sides to now support the studio, and outright calling for Kurvitz to lose the right to access his life’s work. This is not the outcome me and many other like minded fans want to see from this mess. At the end of the day, Elysium is Robert Kurvitz’s life work, and he deserves a chance to legally regain those rights even if he is a prideful and arrogant person. His personality should not dictate whether he is allowed to prove in a court of law that the investors took something that isn’t theirs. Bratt’s well-meaning but deeply misguided efforts to report on the ZA/UM situation may have done more harm than good. I consider this to be the biggest flaw of the video and the reason why the contents ultimately did not sit right with me despite the accuracy and importance of the reporting.

Just as a quick reminder for those who aren’t entirely up to speed or want a refresher, the reason why Kurvitz and Studio ZA/UM are fighting over the IP rights in the first place started when Kurvitz was promised by the investors that if he signed over the rights to Elysium and his book he would eventually be able to buy back a portion of the shares to the company and upon release of the sequel buy back even more. At no point was anyone supposed to possess a majority percent of the shares in the company to remain equitable amongst all participants. So, Kurvitz signed this contract under the assumption that the investors would hold up their end of the bargain while in the short term he would get the funding needed to complete the rest of the game. Unfortunately, when Margus Linnamäe left his position within the company, Ilmar Kompus agreed to buy him out of his share allegedly using the money intended to produce the sequel thus acquiring the majority share which tipped the balance of power. Now, the IP rights are currently held by the company YESSIRNOSIR Ltd. which no one holds shares of but is still owned and controlled by sources within Studio ZA/UM. The lawsuit itself is Kurvitz claiming that the way Kompus bought into the majority share of the company was done illegally and should he be able to prove in a court of law that fraud took place it would immediately delegitimize and invalidate Kompus’s control which would then give Kurvitz and Rostov a chance to reclaim power along with all the subsidiaries of the company which includes YESSIRNOSIR Ltd.

From the way I saw it, it certainly felt like Bratt went out of his way to put blame on the deteriorating work environment and splintering of a two-decade old artist collective squarely on Robert Kurvitz shoulders. If I were to speculate, I think in his anger after not receiving the conclusion he had been hoping for from his interviewee, Bratt refused to acknowledge the very real fact that his hands are legally tied with the things that he can publicly talk about which had the unintentional consequence of villainizing Kurvitz. Bratt is still correct in his assessment that Kurvitz is arrogant and people were hurt by his actions but whether intentional or not misrepresenting how much Kurvitz and his inner circle was responsible for the strife while neglecting to even acknowledge the amount of meddling the investors were doing behind the scenes only detracts from his argument and puts into question who he’s really representing in his video.

#disco elysium #za/um #studio za/um #robert kurvitz #people make games #my thoughts #'kurvtiz was a shitty boss' and 'kurvtiz didn't deserve to have his shit stolen from him' are two statements that can coexist #i don't condone his actions but I do think they didn't just come out of a vacuum #cause if it was just his bad behavior that got him dismissed it doesn't explain why Rostov and Hindpere were fired along with him #it's just weird to me that pmg didn't think to question if the investors might've been the ones to kick off the chain of events #yes yes I know this is meandering but this is a ramble post so it was never gonna be concise in the first place #mp

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lamarckianenterprises · 11 months

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My Completely Unofficial and Uncategorized Real Time Reactions and Thoughts about the Comprehensive Disco Elysium Investigation by People Make Games: (Thinking about this for most of the night led to a fight with someone I'm dating and I think that's very on brand with DE)

youtube

Watching the video

In their opening preamble they stated that they interviewed 16 employees both former and current who worked closely with him who claim that Kurvitz was just a cunt actually (A significant amount of people since the original team was around 30 and the current one is only a hundred or so) They spend a lot of time at the start talking about how this isn’t as black and white as it seems.

Complicated post release company share charts galore.

Apparently no one working on Disco Elysium had uhhh, worked on a game really before that, and this was all Kender's idea

There's a lot of accounting shenanigans for Ilmar Kompus and his business partner whose name I have already forgotten to just straight up hide their real income from the Estonian government solely to avoid paying any of the 11 million they collectively owe in fines paid out to investors of the Baku scam/scandal.

Said business partner's stake in Zaum UK was owned under a shell company named after a five team sailing boat he sails with an ex lover who owns said shell company

Also Ilmar Kompus obtained the majority share of ZAUM Studio (the Estonian parent company that does not own the IP, the IP is in ZAUM UK) by buying Margus Linnamae's shares directly either supposedly without telling the others or after telling the others

LMAO KENDER CLAIMED IN A LAWSUIT THAT HE FINANCED IT NOT ONLY BY TAKING OUT A LOAN UNDER THE NAME OF A BRITISH BASED ZAUM CHILD COMPANY, BUT BY BUYING THE IP RIGHTS FOR A GAME FROM ZAUM FOR 1 POUND AND SELLING IT BACK FOR 4.8 MILLION EUROS

>He dropped the lawsuit and went on to defend ZAUM and the share sale from Kurvitz and Rostov's lawsuit???

Why

The more I learn about the Disco Elysium case the more this sounds like a classic faustian bargain thing or Dickensian novel, the absolute worst people you have ever known got together to make a game no matter the consequences and no matter their initial lack of skills and connections

I'm currently watching the interviews but won't comment on them until I watch all of them

Ilmar at least seems capable of remaining calm and maintaining the same story even if his deflections and replies aren't always the most convincing

But the key takeaways is that he claims that the shareholder agreement in Newelysium, the company set up for the sequel's development and IP which mainly benefits Kurvits, and the others (20% vs his 5%) was essentially used as a carrot to dangle in front of them to agree to his use of company funds to buy out those shares for himself, and that he claims that them trying to single out Tomi Haavel's sus financial arrangements as an example of his duplicity is wrong because they had agreed to those terms and hashed it out with Tomi before he hopped on as a fellow shareholder in the UK branch that owns the IP

Also his justification for their firing was that by the time of the final cut literally none of them were working properly, with Kurvitz supposedly providing no new writing and the credited lead writer for the Final Cut mostly underperforming and another writer, Justin Keenan needing to do the majority of her work

Above and beyond what said other employees took as time away from work to resolve their own burnouts from the grueling development cycle of DE

He mostly defers on the allegations of toxicity, gender discrimination, etc because he's not in a position to legally say anything and wasn't personally there for it to begin with, but he does say that the alleged IP theft attempt was the straw that broke the camel's back. We're not cycling into the interviews with ZA/UM employees both past and present, with one agreeing to come forward on the record with their name on it to represent the viewpoint of the employee and not just the executive guy who'd benefit from Kurvitz eating shit

>The interview is with the Cuno writer

You had my interest before but 👀

>He's also an old friend of Kurvitz and an original member of both ZA/UM the cultural group and their weird little high school dropout anarchist commune gang thing

Huh, apparently Kaur's father was the prototype for Harrier, especially the throwing up thing, that was something that happened to his father

The writer also did Evart, Harrier's boss, the tribunal scene and the hardy boys among other things. He personally feels slighted by Robert because Robert claimed that he wrote half of the million words in DE and while he's not surprised that he lied about that (he's said it before to his face), he does personally think it's innaccurate especially with 3 other non Robert and him writers credited

He describes his relationiship and friendship with Robert the way an ex cult member would describe their former leader

Robert (Kurvitz) apparently had this magnetic charisma that made people look to him for leadership, which was a mistake because he had absolutely no leadership skills or a proper understanding of what being a leader meant

He said that when he first met Robert, he was a young man and Robert to him was almost like a God in terms of how cool he was and how inspiring he seemed. It wasn't until he married his then wife that the weirdness of their relationship was pointed out, and he fell out of that, and tried to form a more normal friendship over the course of development only to realize that he was beginning to fall back into that over time

He was generally short and inconsiderate with other people's feelings, communication wasn't his strong side

Generally stuff like the programmers trying to show him something they were working on and him saying no that's garbage I can't work while looking at this it's demoralizing me, and they come back with a finished copy and he just says its bullshit and they need to start over. When it comes to writing, during the first draft editing process he would often do things such as looking at about four days of work essentially, an entire hub in a dialogue tree, and go, "Nah this doesn't work, it's bullshit" and deleted it

He (Argo) personally learned to cope with it and taking criicism that way, but he's had convos with other writers before and understands that it is pretty toxic

>DE had a fucking nine month long crunch period before initial release

With an average of about 1 to 2 nights spent without rest per week

He reacts to Ilmar's accusation that the three hadn't done much work by going:

For about 3 to 4 months after release everyone was basically expected not to do any work.

He feels that Rostov was probably the one most burnt out by the experience

And the most work Robert did was a tiny, or at least unacceptable amount of work for drafting up concepts for the sequel among two years and doing a kickoff meeting for the political sequels, otherwise he did not contribute to the Final Cut or did much during those two years.

Helen had a very hands off approach to leading, to the point where he personally enjoyed just kinda having no one to answer to, but little actually got done under her direct leadership even if she didn't do no work at all

Also his description of them originally working in a formerly squatted office where water leaks into the server room and the electricity would turn off and on makes me wonder if the next DE project just needs to be a The Making of the Room style mockumentary

He feels that while Robert should still be allowed to work with the world of Elysium, he also feels like the man wasn't like, the sole creator of it, he was instrumental but so are a lot of people who are being labelled as 'demonic money men' who you know

ACTUALLY KNOW HOW TO FUCKING RUN A COMPANY AND ADVERTISE AND GET A GAME DEVELOPED AND PUBLISHED, among other things

He just kinda thinks that Robert is presenting himself as the sole creator of the world and the reason why it all worked to begin with when he was in truth just, the guy who worked on the original idea and fleshed it out through tabletop games and a novel

He does hold a more favorable view on Rostov though as does many employees, who seem to think of him as being like, caught up in a problem Robert started with his departure being a real shame

Helen has apparently been in a romantic relationship with Robert for years before ZA/UM was a thing so they're putting a pin on that and continuing with the other employee interviews they can now publish as people are willing to go on record

The people are Petteri Sulonen the 'lead technologist', Kaspar Tamsalu a lead artist and original Estonian employee group member and Justin Keenan, the current lead writer who is credited as being the one mostly behind the Final Cut's writing despite Helen's credit as a lead writer

(They fucking decided to post snippets from each in sequence instead of coherent snippets from one complete interview to the next why) Kaspar states that he is disappointed in Rostov personally as a friend of him from their teenage years, Petteri says that this was probably the most likely outcome as anything else would have required Robert to actively change how he relates to other people and their work, and Justin states that Robert always had an inner circle following him who seemed to enjoy special privileges from being close to him

And that it was dispiriting for everyone out of said circle because they could essentially get away with doing anything as much or as little as they liked while everyone else had to pick up the slack

Kaspar states that in 2021 Rostov asked him to take over as art lead while he stepped away from the studio for a month, which slowly turned into three that led to Robert suspiciously wanting to take a two month vacation with only people from his in group, which included Rostov

He says that they (Rostov and Robert) had essentially mentally checked out during the time the studio started to really formalize and define itself after DE's release, both in terms of policies such as healthcare and just, general working environment and culture

Justin wrote the moralist and communist quest and kinda states that by the time of Final Cut the already smaller team also had to deal with the three checking out, with him basically having to work on them on his own outside of a few conversations. He accuses Helen of doing no writing as far as he's aware of, and also just, not communicating absolutely anythign a leader should communicate or really doing much leading. He cites that they didn't know what the deadlines were on the Final Cut because she didn't tell them

So the four writers working on the Final Cut ended up kinda, working by themselves while checking up on each other by themselves

Robert apparently told Kaspar straight up that his idea was to spend seven years working on the next project by himself with three other people, two writers and Rostov as the only artist which uhhhh, obviously Kaspar didn't take well since he was in the middle of moving to the UK to follow after the game's new development center after quitting his previous job to do so??? Rostov tried to wave it away by saying that Robert was just being him and having weird wording but then the vacation was announced and he kinda wondered why Robert specifically needed these people to be rested up to work on the sequel

Robert tasked Justin to assign test work to two junior writers who had been working on the Final Cut to develop what could be major quests in the sequel to see if they were worth taking on in the core team. He felt that was unfair but did it anyway, workshopped it between them and Argo, and they did really great work apparently but a year into Robert's sabbatical he said he was taking a two month holiday with his inner circle, and told Justin that he wouldn't have the time to give them his review of their work, and told him to give them the bad news that they weren't going to be on the core team even though their work was great to them

Assured him he had reviewed their work, left on vacation, and a few months later he apparently revealed in a one to one convo with one of said writers that he hadn't actually read or reviewed said work at all

Kaspar notes that said inner circle kinda, made decisions that affected other people in the company mostly based on how they felt at the time without really considering how it would affect other people along with just, kinda disappearing from time to time. And the biggest red flag was when Rostov and Robert sat down with him and Justin at fall 2021 to talk about how while they were still in talks with everyone else and that while it is still going well, they were thinking of taking him and Justin and essentially forming their own studio when they were ready which uhhh, Kaspar had just upgraded from couch surfing to signing a one year no break clause tenancy in an apartment in the UK and was going to be a father and all that and just couldn't like, hop off to follow them along like he had no other responsibilities.

Apparently literally three days before Kaspar's one way flight to the UK, Robert called them for another meeting where he triumphantly declared that he was going to approach Ilmar with a deal that Kaspar begged him not to do because it would get him fired. Justin corroborates by saying that Robert said that this project was his masterpiece and that he couldn't report to anyone on it, he essentially wanted to be the sole creative director for 'his' project, and that he had an idea he thinks could work for convincing the executive producers to let him back on.

He wanted to shelve the sequel, and ask Kaspar and Justin to essentially state that they couldn't do it now and wanted to work on some smaller project instead, and that Robert would work under their lead throughout this project solely to show to the executive producers that he was trustworthy, that for the sequel he could be trusted with regaining his rightful seat as the sole creative director.

Justin then pointed out that if this project went well, which he also didn't want to do because he came here to work on the sequel to begin with, why wouldn't they just go, "Oh hey these two did a great job as the creative leads, why don't we just get them to lead the sequel?" instead of just assigning it to Robert, and Robert literally just went, "Because you'll tell them to."

Petteri essentially vague posts about how Robert suggested he do something for them that would have immediately gotten him fired as a start. Kompus had rather bluntly stated that Petteri was asked to share the source code for DE straight up with him on November the 2nd which Petteri himself corroborates as being true, although he does note that he only told the executives about this conversation a few months after Robert's dismissal, and that this couldn’t have been the reason why he (Robert) was fired.

I really appreciate PMG's initial preface that while it is tempting to approach this from a purely black and white, heroes and villains view, the real situation just like pretty much everything about real life is much more complex than that. Because it does seem like while people accuse them of both sidings a lot, it's just... yeah sometimes it's just like that.

Because an hour and a half in this seems to be about a group of committed bank frauding capitalists teaming up with completely no name anarchist writers, painters and tabletop RPG players of varying national notoriety to make a video game despite literally no one having experience in that field. And the fucking anarchists were the most unbearable people to work with somehow.

Ilmar is almost definitely lying about a lot of things but apparently Tomi was just... a good executive producer???? Everyone has only had nice things to say about him so far???? The literal, I was involved in a 11 million euro investment scandal ten years ago guy just did a good job???

He's skeezy as all hell and all of his earnings goes through at least one shell company to avoid paying estonian debts but like, He was one of the people who helped turn a literal group of no name randos with no previous credit other than a book that sold like, a thousand copies nationally and the worst possible office setup known to man into an award winning game development studio

Kaspar and Petteri closes I think to say that while they can understand why an outsider who wasn't in the office and working with them would buy into the good and evil narrative, it is also still bullshit and apparently people online send Kaspar death threats.

LMAO PMG LITERALLY JUST PULLED THE VIEWER ASIDE TO GO, "HEY IF YOU'RE A FAN OF DE THEN YOU'RE PROBABLY A LITTLE COMMUNIST SO MAYBE CONSIDER NOT SENDING THESE EMPLOYEES WHO JUST SPOKE UP ABOUT THIS DEATH THREATS"

Anyway I think it's kind of interesting that Ilmar was completely confident with having the entirety of his video uploaded to youtube while the trio specifically asked that it not be shared because they may say something that their lawyers would find inadvisable

Robert states that the original production essentially suffered through a hellish production cycle where everyone was sorta expected to put up and try their best to fulfill completely unrealistic production times repeatedly until they finally got it done, with Helen corroborating to say that he and Rostov had essentially done crazy shit like work on this thing from waking up at 4 AM to 11 PM regularly.

Robert states that the original contract for the company holding his IP was essentially until three games or a time limit was passed

I need to stop to say that I can feel that there was a very strong and intentional choice by PMG to present Robert, Rostov, and Helen's take after building up as strong of a case against them as possible, they even went so far as to like, show the thumbnail and title of a youtube essay strongly endorsing their case during the preamble as an example of one of the many supporting the overall good vs evil narrative of an IP being stolen away from its creator.

Somehow despite him being literally what most of us would think of as an underdog and being in the right in this situation, everything he says seems inherently suspect somehow, like I’ve been trained to question everything he says. I keep having to remind myself not to switch to using ‘alleges’ instead of states for example.

It's in the little things, but mostly in the way the non Rostov and Robert corroborators have had their credentials and stakes in defending him already prequestioned for me. Helen is one of the main three and also a former lover of Robert, the only other person in this segment who isn't one of the three is literally described as being a producer and Rostov's wife.

Rostov and Yuan Zhang-Taal (who is said former producer at ZA/UM and Rostov’s wife) paint a picture of him essentially, flaming out by the end of it but gracefully like he was finally happy to just kinda, accomplish it, finish their great work, and the pandemic kinda helped with that because now he could focus on resting without even being expected to leave the house to go the office for example, but the general announcement of the Final Cut, led to a growing sense of stress and nervousness to him as more and more was expected of him again (I can get that a little actually, the fear of like, being expected to go back to that extreme level of crunch can stay with you a while). Yuan states that while he did less work then when compared to the terrifying crunch that was DE’s production cycle, that crunch wasn’t something you could normalize to begin with without destroying yourself.

Robert states that the permanent transfer of the IP was presented to him by Kender as a way to deal with a problematic major shareholder who was the cause behind the deadlines and financing unlike Ilmar who was presented as having fought for them every step of the way, he also states that throughout the process he hadn’t talked to any lawyer, he had no legal representation or consultation of any kind. And thought that since he was being offered authoritarian protections that would supposedly give him creative control over his right’s work, it seemed like something he should do.

Rostov continues to say that yes he did basically just rest for about two whole years he did do that.

Helen states that she was essentially just, handed the position of lead writer along with overseeing the Voice over work for every single goddamn line in the entire fucking game, which she kinda, just had to figure out. She states that the Final Cut’s release date was unknown to her until around mid August, when it was essentially told to her in a general meeting with everyone by Kaur that writing would cease completely in two weeks, and that the game would be released in March next year.

According to Helen during a slack convo Kender admitted that he had essentially messed up as a producer and forgor to tell her about the release date, but that he was essentially fine with her just giving him a new date for when everything would probably be fine and ready to hand over to the VO department.

Yuan was apparently brought on later in DE Final Cut’s development, and found it strange that Kaur and Tomi accused Helen of just straight up lying about when the deadline was and being a lazy worker when she knows and works with Helen and knows that she’s doing her best.

Helen tried calling Kaur and getting them to all just sit down and hash it out but Kaur just went oh no it’s fine just keep working. Tomi just straight up called her and started screaming at her for being terrible at her job and unsuited to leadership though while asking her to step down, it came off as being fired at the time, and apparently another writer in the same room could hear her being screamed at through her headphones.

With all of the prequestioning and literally everyone else who works there who's interview is shown outside of the big three shittalking them Helen comes off at best as like, being Peter principled. She did such a good job as a writer that she got promoted to a lead writer, a mostly managerial role who'll also help coordinate how lines are to be delivered by the VOs and then was just sort of dogshit at it.

She responds to the allegations by Kompus and the two other writers about the complete lack of presence as a leader and her lack of work as a writer with no new words supposedly being written by instead going on a tangent about how ZA/UM shuffled her around companies every 2 years to avoid crediting her properly and giving her proper benefits that a worker would have in the UK after being a contracted worker for two years in the same company.

She literally just goes, "I respect these writers but anyway let me talk about how Za/Um screwed me over and are now finally acknowledging that yes I did work as a lead writer"

Robert tries to present himself and Rostov as being victims of a push from the top to demote them from the lead in future creative projects, and trying to distract them by playing them off of each other to get them to fight, but PGM immediately calls bullshit on that in the video when compared to what other employees have said and cuts to a clip of ARgo saying that no in fact Rostov was pushed to demote himself by Robert himself who essentially gaslit the man by preying on his insecurities by trying to convince him that he was unfit to lead. Going on until Rostov approached the producers and they came up with a scheme where every creative lead would have an administrative counterpart, Kaspar with Rostov and Justin with Robert.

The Administrative leads would not only be creative partners but also be the ones to talk to the producers and manage the day to day work of the writing and art teams apparently, basically one person had final say sort of about the creative direction, and the other basically did all of the actual lead work of actually taking care of the team (which Robert is continuously portrayed as being bad at).

Robert seemed fine with this at first since he could essentially focus on writing, but after a month or so he realized that he basically was just a writer and only the defacto head, and he would keep complaining about it during the zoom meetings the writers would hold, while also apparently trying to get Rostov to be dissatisfied with it too despite this whole thing being his idea???

He apparently managed to convince Rostov to be dissatisfied with this and they approached the producers to tell them that they were ready to lead once more, which uhhh, none of the other writers (except possibly for Helen) really wanted on Robert’s case.

Roberts refutes Ilmar’s claim that he had talked to them beforehand about the necessity of him using company funds to buy out the major stockholder share for himself, and Helen states that she was the one who found out about the shift. Roberts asserts that he had thought Tomi’s shell company was actually Ilmar’s this whole time, and had asked him why he had effectively a 40% share in the IP company, and what they got out of all this. And he mentions a heated email exchange/thread that interestingly enough, Ilmar himself provided to PMG.

It mainly concerns Roberts and Rostov wanting to be more involved in the company both as shareholders and employees, and setting up emails about the future of the company, asking about company docs, figuring out what their roles would be in Disco Elysium 2. But around November Roberts became the only one messaging in the thread, apparently asking for basic documents that he should already have had access to? And Ilmar had just checked out of the exchange, building up to a meeting at about 9th that ended with the trio getting fired a week or so afterwards.

Roberts had gone into shock after realizing what had happened and Helen and he had spent an entire day basically just dealing with UK mental health services to deal with it. He reiterates Kaur Kender’s claims, and throws shade on the IP Ilmar had supposedly shuffled around in the company. Also he states that despite being shareholders in Newelysium, both he and Rostov were completely unaware of its incorporation which is just wild to me, he states that Rostov had just signed onto it as director but don’t you need to like, actually get the permission of shareholders of the company you are making before giving them shares in the UK?

Robert also states that he was unaware of Anu Reiman (Tomi’s wife/partner) receiving funds from ZA/UM. And that they were approached by Ilmar with a substantial offer monetarily to resolve the case, get bought out from ZA/UM, and essentially become the Notch of DE.

They dispute that toxicity was the cause for their firing, as they state that the timelines and reasons for it have shifted over time with each new case, and that the original reason given was that they were attempting to steal the IP and sell it to other companies, which they dispute. They interestingly enough chose a set of big names in game development as the ones they were accused of approaching although according to PMG none of those companies or John Sawyer was the one any employee has mentioned, with the most common one being the BG3 developers Larian. Chris Bratt (The PMG guy covering this) notes that he’s never quite understood how this would have worked anyway or whether any of this was based in truth, and honestly same, were they just going to make Tesco Elysian or something???

Argo’s statements are mentioned to Robert, and he initially claims that he asks himself everyday if he is a good leader or if he’s doing a good enough job, but that a lot of these allegations come from people who took money from him illegally (Ilmar), but he does eventually admit that yes a lot of people other than him may have been hurt as well, especially during the arduous production process.

Chris Bratt states that after he posed these questions, the vibes in the room felt off and he could later on tell that Robert was pretty clearly upset so he like, softballed the questions from then on. Which yes was obviously a mistake but I can sorta understand why, I guess maintaining goodish relations with them did allow him to get followup interviews with Rostov and followup emails after the other employees had come forward as willing to go on the record though.

He really softballs the year long sabbatical question goddamn. But yeah Roberts basically says that he was extremely drained from the 12 hour days he had taken up until that point and really needed the break and it was so sad that Rostov didn’t get someone who could take his place like Roberts did and Kaur Kender kept shitting on him and he and Tomi were also always dissatisfied with Helen despite the incredible job she was doing. He defends it as a necessary way to recover from his post development burnout, and that he in fact had put in normal amounts of work throughout that period.

Rostov also points out that said two months of vacation, which Argo also joined, was necessary to get into the right mindset to prepare concepts for the next game. Roberts also pointed out that it wasn’t a privilege, just the exact amount of days allowed by British Law as mandatory vacation time each year taken out in one sitting.

Yeah I think the employee interviews were a great idea, especially presented in the order they were. Rostov, Robert, and Helen are doing their best to like, dispel the accusations, state that they aren’t really an issue or anywhere near as bad as they seem, and that the image of Robert presented is really just a caricature of who he is to advance a message or viewpoint and like, I don’t know man, I’m pretty sure you three have been doing that with Ilmar, Kender, and Tomi as well, potentially deserved or not it feels like a weak appeal to me. And a lot of it comes off as a classic like, “I’m sorry that you felt that way” apology outside of the complete lack of like, need to defend himself Robert has noted.

At least he does state that people shouldn’t harass ZA/UM employees though, which is nice but idk it’s buried 2 hours and 14 minutes into a video that’s mostly been about questioning and prodding at his statements so far I don’t know if this will really stop anyone who believes him enough to send death threats at a complete stranger.

While Helen, Robert, and Rostov has vehemently denied that their behavior has been called into question until after their dismissal, Ilmar Kompus has provided a slack message from a few months before their dismissal that if true would prove otherwise. It's apparently five months before his firing and from Tomi, referring to Robert’s behavior in a meeting he wasn’t invited to but jumped into anyway when he took the headset from Helene.

Interesting to note that it’s actually a screenshot they showed us near the very start of the video, the one that very politely tells Kurvits that he is being an ass but that if he is willing to change they are still willing to work with him. I didn’t know that it was sent by Tomi at the time so honestly I still maintain that as shady and possibly criminal as he is, the man seems to just… be doing his best as an executive producer, and he seems to be doing ok, which is hilarious to me personally.

Kurvits’s reaction to the allegations made in the interview to the four employees including someone who's known him since his teenage years that he was:

Consistently inconsiderate of other people's feelings in a way that could yes create a toxic work environment

Tried to convince one of them to steal DE's source code for him

Tried to convince two of them to start a whole other side project just to make him look good to allow him to be the sole lead of DE 2

Gaslit the art lead into wanting to step down after DE's release

Had an inner circle that he regularly favored who could essentially do anything they want and coudl slack off and expect other workers to make up for it

Seemed convinced that he was the most victimized and tired and beaten down by the crunch and that after all of this collaborative work that Elysium was entirely his baby.

Etc.

Was quite literally just virtue signaling, by, and I’m paraphrasing here, going, "Loe and behold the crooked capitalists and conmen are trying to drive an artificial wedge between us poor and downtrodden workers, all of this has consumed our lives and damaged us irreparably, I would relinquish my shares for free but it is my only recourse for justice and as a writer I need to believe in something and I happen to believe in communism etc"

But also I do need to note, he added, and I’m paraphrasing here, “Art isn't about ending decades long friendships with someone because you realize that they were unbearable to work with and they are no longer an idol to worship over what initially started as petty disagreements and uncomfortable behavior.” and uh, no that’s exactly what art is about, that’s literally how most bands end, shush.

Massive props to Chris Bratt of PMG for immediately noting how outrageous he personally finds the email to be. I don’t think we watch 2 and a half hour long video essays for complete objectivity anyway (if that even exists to be blunt) and yeah it is pretty scummy that he’s trying to deflect entirely

This all feels like one of those problems that could have been resolved if there was a reasonable adult to try and get them to sit down and hash it out among each other to clear up what are mostly just, basic communication and treatable behavioral issues. Unfortunately everyone in the room was either doing bank fraud or needed therapy at best.

I guess the main takeaway from this is just. Two things can be true at the same time, both siding is bad when it's like, someone from a country saying that since another country does unrelated bad things, everyone from that country should shut up about the bad things their country is doing or has done. But this isn't whataboutism, it's literally just, "Hey actually maybe he is a cunt as well, Maybe the employees are speaking against him not because they feel the need to defend Ilmar to keep their paycheck but because Roberts was in fact just not a good team lead at best and aggravating and unbearable at worst"

But what I really hate is that Disco Elysium and its devs are communist adjacent enough that they have easy virtues to signal to in this case. I’m not saying that Ilmar’s hands are clean, but it’s not a good look when you pander to worker’s rights and collective action every single time someone mentions personal criticism of you and your work.

Also someone with actual money pay PMG please I'm too brokeass to do it myself. I think they did a really good job on this one.

#journaling #disco elysium #people make games #za/um #studio za/um #communication #Youtube

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