Disco Elysium Writer Robert Kurvitz Files Lawsuit Against ZA/UM [Update]

Update: October 25th, 2022 at 8:00 a.m.

Our American siblings got in touch with Martin Luiga, the editor of Kurvitz’s book which eventually became the framework for Disco Elysium.

While he had a lot of interesting information regarding the prior dissolution of the ZA/UM Cultural Association, there wasn’t much he could say regarding the upcoming court case.

However, he was asked if he thought the case’s purpose was to regain control of the Elysium IP, to which he responded, “What else could it possibly be?”

The original story continues below.

Original: October 24th, 2022 at 9:50 a.m.

You may remember that earlier this month, news broke that the minds behind Disco Elysium were essentially ousted from developer ZA/UM. According to recent Estonian court filings, that story may not yet be over.

On October 1st, Martin Luiga, one of the founding members of ZA/UM as well as the editor of the novel behind Disco Elysium, posted a blog post on Medium announcing the dissolution of the ZA/UM Cultural Association.

Luiga stated plainly that the ZA/UM Cultural Association was not to be confused with ZA/UM as a company. Luiga went on to reveal he, along with Disco Elysium creators Anthony Kurvitz, Aleksander Rostov, and Helen Hindpere, had ‘involuntarily’ departed the company at the end of last year.

In our reporting of the news, two sources familiar with the situation revealed that an internal announcement from the studio of Kurvitz’s departure ‘also contained a threat of possible legal action against him’, which is possibly due to the fact that Kurvitz and Rostov are shareholders in the studio.

Now for the update. According to a report from Tech News Space, Kurvitz, who also wrote the novel that Disco Elysium is based on, has filed a lawsuit again ZA/UM on behalf of his own company, Telomer.

This was indirectly confirmed by Luiga, who was an editor for the game, through a tweet earlier today.

https://t.co/1A00K8H6gB
law-jaw

— ∞Luiga∞ (@martinluiga) October 23, 2022

Doing a bit of digging, we found that Kurvitz is in fact a board member of Telomer OÜ, and has been since its creation in January 2020.

Not only that but based on a search on the Estonian Ministry of Justice’s website Riigi Teataja, we could find that Kurvitz’s company has filed an application against ZA/UM Studio to ‘obtain information and review documents.’

According to this, the court date is listed as November 28th, 2022, but other than the title of the session, we don’t know much else about what the lawsuit will entail.

Considering Kurvitz has said in a previous interview with GameSpot that he wanted to make “what Baldur’s Gate 2 is to Baldur’s Gate 1“, there’s a very possible chance that the team is attempting to put gears in motion in order to get the rights for further Disco Elysium games, but that’s purely speculation on our end.

We will update this piece if any new information regarding the hearing comes to light.