Disco Elysium's studio ZA/UM terminates the game's successor and fires a third of its staff. Wages a war against its own artists. Chaos ensues. Kurvitz is vi...
I was under the impression that ZA/UM owns the rights for not just the game but the world of Elysium, though I am not a copyright lawyer or anything so I don’t know what exactly is copywritable.
There were six writers, and dozens of other people, for most of the development of Disco Elysium. Why would it be any better for just three of them to get the rights?
As far as I know the world of Elysium was created and developed as a setting for a D&D game Kurvitz was DMing for his friend group starting from his teens. That group of people built it together over two decades. Kurvitz also wrote a novel set in that world, which released in 2013. The setting already existed and was pretty developed when work started on Disco Elysium the video game. If you want to get into the weeds I agree that people like Hindpere and Rostov have less of a claim on the IP than people like Martin Luiga and Argo Tuulik who were part of that campaign DMed by Kurvitz. Tuulik was the last writer who worked on DE remaining at ZA/UM, but he seems to have been fired the other day. The interview with him was a good read.
It is sad but unsurprising to hear that Tuulik was one of the people recently fired. I had almost kinda hoped the studio would move on and make non Elysium games eventually. There were still talented people there, and when you look into it most gaming companies are run by scum. It seems unlikely at this point that they’ll even be able to do that though. It really just does exist to siphon money off Disco Elysium sales at this point, I think.
As for the copyright, yes, you are technically correct. Nothing can be set in that world. I’m also not a copyright lawyer, so take everything I say with a grain of salt, but from my understanding outside of the actual content of the game there’s really not much that’s copywritable outside of some names. If they just change the names and set a new story in a new city with new characters there’s really not anything anyone can do to stop them. Even for the city they’d really just have to change the details. You can’t copyright idea of a vaguely eastern European vaguely post-Sovietish sci-fi/fantasy city. Maybe they’d need to change one big thing revealed near the end that I don’t want to talk about because of spoilers. This is all replying to someone who said they haven’t played the game and don’t want to be spoiled after all. Even for that they’d just have to change the name and some of the details of how it works though, I think. A lot of what makes it what it is is to vague to be copyrighted, I think.
I don’t think it’s as easy as just changing some names and moving on, mainly on a personal level. The attachment to this world has to be immense after all these years. I don’t think Kurvitz and co. want to just make something set in a fantastical post-soviet setting, I think they want to work in Elysium specifically. At least that’s how I would feel, were I in their shoes.
Second, there is so much detail in the world that both gives it character a and is most likely copywritable. They have to come up with new, legally distinct versions of the innocentic system, Dolores Dei, the Coalition, the >!pale!< and the isolas etc etc. I think it’s much more likely they do something completely different than something akin to “legally distinct DE”. Though if Kurvitz just ends up bitterly doing nothing but relapse on his alcoholism then that wouldn’t surprise me either. Again, that’s probably what I would do in his shoes.
I was under the impression that ZA/UM owns the rights for not just the game but the world of Elysium, though I am not a copyright lawyer or anything so I don’t know what exactly is copywritable.
As far as I know the world of Elysium was created and developed as a setting for a D&D game Kurvitz was DMing for his friend group starting from his teens. That group of people built it together over two decades. Kurvitz also wrote a novel set in that world, which released in 2013. The setting already existed and was pretty developed when work started on Disco Elysium the video game. If you want to get into the weeds I agree that people like Hindpere and Rostov have less of a claim on the IP than people like Martin Luiga and Argo Tuulik who were part of that campaign DMed by Kurvitz. Tuulik was the last writer who worked on DE remaining at ZA/UM, but he seems to have been fired the other day. The interview with him was a good read.
It’s a sorry situation for everyone involved.
It is sad but unsurprising to hear that Tuulik was one of the people recently fired. I had almost kinda hoped the studio would move on and make non Elysium games eventually. There were still talented people there, and when you look into it most gaming companies are run by scum. It seems unlikely at this point that they’ll even be able to do that though. It really just does exist to siphon money off Disco Elysium sales at this point, I think.
As for the copyright, yes, you are technically correct. Nothing can be set in that world. I’m also not a copyright lawyer, so take everything I say with a grain of salt, but from my understanding outside of the actual content of the game there’s really not much that’s copywritable outside of some names. If they just change the names and set a new story in a new city with new characters there’s really not anything anyone can do to stop them. Even for the city they’d really just have to change the details. You can’t copyright idea of a vaguely eastern European vaguely post-Sovietish sci-fi/fantasy city. Maybe they’d need to change one big thing revealed near the end that I don’t want to talk about because of spoilers. This is all replying to someone who said they haven’t played the game and don’t want to be spoiled after all. Even for that they’d just have to change the name and some of the details of how it works though, I think. A lot of what makes it what it is is to vague to be copyrighted, I think.
I don’t think it’s as easy as just changing some names and moving on, mainly on a personal level. The attachment to this world has to be immense after all these years. I don’t think Kurvitz and co. want to just make something set in a fantastical post-soviet setting, I think they want to work in Elysium specifically. At least that’s how I would feel, were I in their shoes.
Second, there is so much detail in the world that both gives it character a and is most likely copywritable. They have to come up with new, legally distinct versions of the innocentic system, Dolores Dei, the Coalition, the >!pale!< and the isolas etc etc. I think it’s much more likely they do something completely different than something akin to “legally distinct DE”. Though if Kurvitz just ends up bitterly doing nothing but relapse on his alcoholism then that wouldn’t surprise me either. Again, that’s probably what I would do in his shoes.