Another Disco Elysium legacy project has been announced.
Summer Eternal is a new studio from Argo Tuulik, a former ZA/UM developer cited for having co-created the Disco Elysium world-build. They are the third ZA/UM-adjacent group to take advantage of Disco Elysium's fifth anniversary on October 11 to announce their next steps.
If you're having a hard time keeping track of everything, you're not alone, but this seems to be the fifth – fifth! – Disco Elysium branch, with three of them announced on the same day. The others include Longdue, a new independent studio made up of staff from Disco Elysium's ZA/UM studio, and Dark Math Games, a studio that describes itself as a “breakaway group from the original Disco Elysium development team.”
Writer and designer Robert Kurvitz also founded Red Info in 2023 with artist Aleksander Rostov. And then there is ZA/UM itself, of course.
Tuulik was the last remaining writer to contribute to Disco Elysium and was fired earlier this year following the cancellation of a standalone Disco Elysium expansion.
Tuulik has teamed up with Disco Elysium writers Olga Moskvina and Dora Klindšič, as well as voice actor Lenval Brown, senior concept artist Anastasia Ivanova, designer Michael Oswell, and former Gamechuck CEO Aleksandar Gavrilovič.
“We must be living at the dawn of a cultural Golden Age, when, like mushrooms after the rain, companies promising 'the next Elysium Disco' appear every hour on the hour,” Summer Eternal said in a statement to Agency.
“It's a sure sign that the fifth anniversary of the release of this monumental game is approaching and every corporation wants a piece of its fortune.
“However, in this thirst for money the creatives themselves are often forgotten, first instrumentalized for press releases and then underpaid, silenced, intimidated, sued, abused… But it is all of us – the creatives, the workers , the players- who should have control over the means of our creation and who should be celebrated on this day.
“Therefore, today we announce our own vision of a worker-owned cooperative, a complex structure that will ensure that not only lenders but every worker, every creative, even every gamer, has a seat at the table.”
Interestingly, Tuulik is keen to emphasize that this project No It will be a sequel to Disco Elysium.
“Definitely not a sequel to Disco Elysium!” Tuulik said. “It's time to break with the past and start a new chapter.
“It will be a completely new setting and story with new mechanics. But at the end of the day, we are who we are, and RPGs are what we will do; do what you want with them :)”
“I think we did something genre-breaking last time,” Tuulik added. “It transcends discipline. Something completely new. I'm not willing to give that up.
“The lessons learned, the skills developed, the experience forged… for five fucking years, I've been waiting to put them into practice. So we went back to the drawing board with one goal in mind: let's make it fresh from the beginning. But this one Maybe let's not screw each other the moment the checkered flag falls, it makes all of humanity look bad.
This apparent rivalry is likely the result of unrest at the studio following the release of Disco Elysium, including a lawsuit, reports of toxic behavior and intellectual property theft, and layoffs after a standalone expansion was reportedly canceled, which led to an extremely public legal dispute.