We've got ZA/UM, Red Info, and now Longdue laying claim to the Disco legacy.
Disco Elysium 2 is dead, long live Disco Elysium spiritual successors. Newly-revealed studio Longdue has announced that it is working on a Disco-inspired RPG, with a “dozen strong” staff that includes some former members of Studio ZA/UM.
Whatever Longdue is working on, it seems a long way off, with the game having yet to be assigned an official name. The studio’s first press release includes an evocative bit of concept art showing three shadowed figures looking through a triangular window in some kind of cave or ruin. Longdue says its game “explores the delicate interplay between the conscious and subconscious, the seen and unseen,” and that “choices ripple between the character’s psyche and environment.” Longdue has also coined the term “psychogeographic RPG” for its upcoming game, which sounds classically Disco and speaks to that theme of psychology warping reality.
(Image credit: Longdue)
Longdue cites Disco Elysium and Planescape: Torment as primary inspirations, and also specifically indicates that this will be an isometric RPG in the style of those games. At this juncture, Longdue has not disclosed which former developers from Studio ZA/UM are part of the team, but it has clarified that Disco Elysium writer Robert Kurvitz and artist Aleksander Rostov are not part of the studio. Kurvitz and Rostov remain at the helm of their own initiative, Red Info Ltd.
Disco’s legacy has been defined almost as much by the battle over its creative and legal ownership as it has by its brilliance as a work of art. Kurvitz, Rostov, and Disco Elysium writer Helen Hindpere left Studio ZA/UM in 2021, alleging that company management had unfairly seized control over the intellectual property, while that management maintains it fired the three on reasonable grounds.
Earlier this year, we published our own investigation into Studio ZA/UM’s post-Disco efforts, including a scrapped sequel and a “standalone expansion” that was canceled in February. That game’s whole team, including Disco Elysium writer Argo Tuulik, was laid off as part of the cancellation. At the time of that report, ZA/UM’s primary game in active development was an RPG in a new setting, distinct from Elysium.
With Red Info and now Longdue, there are three separate studios whose staff include Disco alums laying claim to the RPG’s legacy. At the time of writing, it is unclear how the struggle over legal ownership of the Disco IP between Red Info and ZA/UM has progressed. PC Gamer news writer Joshua Wolens put it well: “Incredibly apt for a communist game studio to split into multiple competing factions.”
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