In February 2024, ZA/UM cancelled the standalone Disco Elysium expansion which was then known by its codename X7 and is now known as “Locust City”. At the same time, ZA/UM announced they would make nearly a third of their workforce redundant. I was on that list. As co-creator of Locust City alongside Argo Tuulik, I was approached by GLHF.gg for comment and issued a press statement about joining ZA/UM in 2022, which I likened to “being born into Yugoslavia in the ’90s: you’ve just missed the Party and now all you get is the bloodshed.”
In Spring 2025, Chris Bratt from People Make Games informed me that they would be interested to do a new documentary on ZA/UM and what’s colloquially known as the new Disco Elysium “successors”, part of which would cover the tragic ruin of Locust City. I agreed to give Chris an interview and shared a large amount of evidence of the trail of broken relationships and agonizing workplace conditions behind the project. Our interview was filmed in April 2025 and took around four to five hours to film in its raw form, and we also had many pre- and follow-up calls to establish the course of events. I also detailed how the cancellation of the project and the imminent redundancy was preceded by a nearly 80-page formal Grievance complaint I had filed to the studio’s HR, highlighting a range of systemic issues at the studio which of course, the studio and its Leads and Directors issued a blanket denial of.
When the documentary aired in August 2025 — and you should really watch it on YouTube if you haven’t already, Chris put an enormous amount of work and expense in the making — I was appalled but not surprised to find that ZA/UM had issued a number of false and unsubstantiated allegations against my character under guise of an anonymous corporate statement. I was never shown their statement or their allegations before they were broadcast, and I was not given a chance to respond and refute before the video was published. Therefore I am doing so now.
In short:
- ZA/UM made false allegations about things I never did in order to bring my character into question and distract from their shameful management failures,
- A mistake led to the publication of a statement that I had been placed under an “external HR investigation”, which was never the case, but gave ZA/UM’s claims a false credibility,
- ZA/UM claimed they had found evidence against me in an internal HR investigation and leaked my supposed confidential HR documents to People Make Games, but no such investigation documents existed during my entire employment at ZA/UM nor were they provided to my trade union representative nor myself, which raises questions into the legitimacy of their claims, with the possibility of the investigation being either forged and backdated or dated after my departure and therefore unverified,
- and ZA/UM denied and covered up wrongdoing done by their leadership and management which I’ve previously raised and evidenced against them, attempting to further bring my credibility into question.
cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/33372533
> He directed and programmed The Elder Scrolls: Arena. For the spectacular sequel, The Elder Scrolls II: Daggerfall, he programmed, designed, and led the overall project. He worked in various roles on spinoff projects Battlespire and Redguard, as well as the absolutely timeless third mainline title, Morrowind.
>
> For decades, fans have praised him as 'The Father of The Elder Scrolls'. Yesterday, the irreplaceable Julian LeFay passed away at the too-young age of 59.
>
> **Farewell To A Legend**
>
> In 2019, LeFay co-created OnceLost Games alongside fellow former Bethesda developers Ted Peterson Vijay Lakshman. LeFay had been directing an upcoming spiritual successor to Daggerfall, The Wayward Realms. Six days ago, producer Victor Villareal released a video revealing that LeFay had recently departed OnceLost Games due to a terminal cancer diagnosis.
>
> The video, which included a touching statement from Peterson, explained that LeFay was stepping down from game development altogether in order to spend what time he had left with his loved ones. In a cruel twist that will leave so many of us reeling for years to come, Julian LeFay passed away just five days later.
cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/33372533
> He directed and programmed The Elder Scrolls: Arena. For the spectacular sequel, The Elder Scrolls II: Daggerfall, he programmed, designed, and led the overall project. He worked in various roles on spinoff projects Battlespire and Redguard, as well as the absolutely timeless third mainline title, Morrowind.
>
> For decades, fans have praised him as 'The Father of The Elder Scrolls'. Yesterday, the irreplaceable Julian LeFay passed away at the too-young age of 59.
>
> **Farewell To A Legend**
>
> In 2019, LeFay co-created OnceLost Games alongside fellow former Bethesda developers Ted Peterson Vijay Lakshman. LeFay had been directing an upcoming spiritual successor to Daggerfall, The Wayward Realms. Six days ago, producer Victor Villareal released a video revealing that LeFay had recently departed OnceLost Games due to a terminal cancer diagnosis.
>
> The video, which included a touching statement from Peterson, explained that LeFay was stepping down from game development altogether in order to spend what time he had left with his loved ones. In a cruel twist that will leave so many of us reeling for years to come, Julian LeFay passed away just five days later.
it’s not like it’s some chatGPT plagerism factory, it has an AI to generate new assets based on the art already made by the devlopers, to cut down on time. But always online is lame.
From my two days of playing a year or two ago, they unlock all premium features and expansions for you at the onset, so there’s a bunch of extra stuff.
I need to fix the desktop side of my switch so I can install decky and all the other cool add-ons. Dunno what happened but the password set on the konsole doesn’t work and I have to reset something.
The accusations against Parlamentní listy apparently played a role in Španěl and Pavlíček’s decision to add it to their portfolio. Španěl told Game Developer that the pair “recognized the increasing distortion of public debate during key moments like the 2015 European migration crisis and the Covid-19 pandemic.”
“This motivated us to take responsibility and help ensure independent voices challenging the prevailing narrative could be heard. We believe freedom of speech is essential for a prosperous and thriving society and competition of different world views, ideas and approaches is super important.”
I was in basic training during gamergate, and to this day I’m confused what the actual event was and it’s evolution. All I know is ‘gamers’ felt more right wing after it
It will be lacking features, this kickstarter is just to fund a year of early access development to shop it around to publishers to get started on the real work
Still not really out of the ordinary for Kickstarter, or collaborative world building in general, at least the ttrpg games I’m in. And, still, the devs work with you on that stuff. Yeah I suppose it’s not a pure product, but I imagine there won’t be anything actually out of whack design wise when it releases.
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Julianos has achieved CHIM, RIP