ZA/UM Staff Form First Official Gaming Union In UK

As the statement points out, the news comes at a time when mass layoffs and studio shutdowns have become the norm across the game industry, with the last few years setting records (the bad kind) for the sheer volume of firings. Almost 15,000 workers in the field were affected by layoffs in 2024.

“Anyone working in the sector can see that the game has been rigged against us for far too long,” Spring McParlin-Jones, Chair of the Game Workers Union, wrote in a statement. “Now developers at ZA/UM are proving that by coming together as a union we can take back power and shape our workplaces for the better. We need to build an industry where workers can create exciting, meaningful games without sacrificing their social lives, their mental health, or their financial stability. I hope ZA/UM workers’ achievement inspires others working in the games industry to join us in fighting for a fairer, more sustainable sector.”

While this seems to be great news for the current staff at the company, I imagine some will point out that it would have been nice if this unionization had come earlier. After releasing Disco Elysium in 2019, ZA/UM went through a very public and messy power struggle, where almost all of the game’s lead creatives were either fired by management or quit, resulting in various successor studios that now all claim to be the true heirs to Disco’s legacy.

To summarize the conflict, Disco Elysium creative lead Robert Kurvitz butted heads with company majority shareholders Ilmar Kompus and Tõnis Haavel in a situation summed up by one anonymous employee as “CEO corporate scheming on one side, a toxic auteur on the other.” Kurvitz’s team accused Kompus and Haavel of stealing money from the company (Haavel was previously convicted of defrauding investors in a separate matter in 2007), before firing the key creatives who dreamed up Disco Elysium—Kurvitz originally created this setting for his novel, Sacred and Terrible Air. Meanwhile, Kompus and Haavel described Kurvitz as perpetuating a toxic workplace.

At this point, there are several splinter studios made up of ex-Disco Elysium staff, including Kurvitz’s studio, Red Info Ltd (which has largely been radio silent), and Argo Tulik’s co-op Summer Eternal (which recently announced a development anthology book). Other successor studios include Dark Math Games (Tangerine Antarctic), Longdue Games (Hopetown), and more. Meanwhile, ZA/UM showed off a new trailer for its upcoming game, Zero Parades – For Dead Spies, a few weeks ago during a Sony State of Play livestream, which seems to indicate it’s the farthest along out of any of these projects.