The Story of ZA/UM

ZERO PARADES: For Dead Spies is published by ZA/UM — the studio whose name still appears on the cover of Disco Elysium. But the people who made Disco Elysium and the people who made ZERO PARADES are not the same group. The studio's history since 2021 has been one of the most contested stories in modern game development, and it shapes how the new game is being received.

What follows is a neutral chronology of the public record — what each side has said, what the courts have heard, and where the original team is today. This page does not take a side in the dispute.

A Novel, Then a Studio

ZA/UM began as a cultural collective in Tallinn around the Estonian novelist Robert Kurvitz. The world that would become Disco Elysium — Elysium itself, the city of Revachol, the political tides washing through it — first existed as a tabletop RPG and a published novel, Sacred and Terrible Air (2013).

In 2016 the collective formalised into a game studio, ZA/UM, to adapt that world into a video game. Kurvitz led writing and design. Aleksander Rostov served as lead artist; Helen Hindpere joined as a lead writer. Estonian businessman Margus Linnamäe provided the majority of the funding.

Disco Elysium and the Rise of ZA/UM

Disco Elysium released on October 15, 2019. It won the Game Awards categories for Best Narrative, Best RPG, Best Independent Game and Fresh Indie Game, and arrived as a critical phenomenon — a CRPG made by a roughly 35-person in-house team whose protagonist had no combat skills, only a conversation with himself. A 2021 re-release, Disco Elysium — The Final Cut, added full voice acting and console ports.

Through 2020 and into 2021, ZA/UM publicly discussed work on a direct sequel — internally referenced as Project Y12 — to be led by the same creative trio. That project never shipped.

The 2021 Departures

In late 2021, Robert Kurvitz, Aleksander Rostov, Helen Hindpere and producer Martin Luiga left ZA/UM. The first public confirmation came from Luiga in an open statement that the studio "no longer represents the ethos it was founded on." Kurvitz and Rostov soon stated that their departure had not been voluntary.

ZA/UM's position has been that the departures followed an ordinary shareholder restructuring. Around the same period, Margus Linnamäe's majority shares had been acquired by Tütreke OÜ, a holding company connected to Ilmar Kompus, who became CEO.

The Lawsuits and the Public Dispute

Beginning in 2022, multiple legal actions and counter-claims were filed in Estonian and UK jurisdictions. The summary below is intentionally neutral; the underlying allegations are disputed by the parties involved.

• Kurvitz and Rostov publicly alleged that ZA/UM funds were used, improperly, to finance the change of control of the company — citing in particular a transaction in which IP sketches for sequels were sold for a nominal sum and resold for several million euros.
• In October 2022, executive producer Kaur Kender filed a claim against Kompus for approximately €1 million; the suit was dropped in December 2022 after a settlement that included Kompus repaying €4.8 million to ZA/UM.
• On March 14, 2023, ZA/UM stated that all related legal actions had concluded and that Kurvitz and Rostov's claim had been dropped for lack of evidence. Three days later, Kurvitz and Rostov publicly disputed that characterisation as "wrong and misleading" and said they would continue to pursue legal options.

Where the Original Team Went

Most of the senior creative staff who left ZA/UM in 2021–2022 are now spread across several smaller studios, each working on narrative-driven games:

• Red Info — co-founded by Kurvitz and Rostov in 2022. Reported to be developing a spiritual successor to Disco Elysium, backed by investment from NetEase. Writer Chris Avellone (Planescape: Torment, Fallout: New Vegas) was attached at one point.
• Summer Eternal — founded by former ZA/UM writers Argo Tuulik and Dora Klindžić, later joined by other senior ZA/UM developers including Olga Moskvina. The studio has been public about its values-led structure; its first project has not been formally announced.
• Longdue — co-founded by Martin Luiga with the voice actor of Disco Elysium's narrator, Lenval Brown, plus veterans of Bungie and Rockstar. Their game, Hopetown, ran a Kickstarter campaign in April 2025.
• Dark Math Games — founded by Kaur Kender and Margus Linnamäe; developing a third-person narrative game, Tangerine Antarctic.

None of these projects share continuity with Disco Elysium — ZA/UM owns that IP. They are spiritual descendants only.

ZA/UM Today and ZERO PARADES

The ZA/UM that exists in 2026 retains the Disco Elysium IP and is led by Ilmar Kompus. After the 2021 departures, the studio quietly worked on several internal projects. A planned Disco Elysium spin-off, internally called X7 or Locust City, was cancelled in February 2024 alongside layoffs that affected roughly a quarter of remaining staff.

ZERO PARADES: For Dead Spies — internally project C4 — is the first major release from this iteration of the studio. ZA/UM has framed it as a continuation of its design philosophy: dense writing, skill-driven conversation, choices with weight. Whether it carries forward the spirit of Disco Elysium is, for many fans, the central question — and it is the question this story explains the stakes of.

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