Disco Elysium may be widely considered to be one of the greatest games ever made, but its legacy has been fraught with drama. The game came from scrappy beginnings, to say the least – it came out of a countercultural art movement formed by a group of artists, and its creators started work while living in a squat in a former gallery in Estonia.
Going into the details of its transformation would take a very long time, but suffice it to say that after a series of events involving firings, lawsuits, statements, and even an investigative documentary, most of Disco Elysium’s key developers split off to do their own thing. In fact, three spiritual successors to the iconic game, all with former members of the team involved, were somehow revealed on the same day.
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Everything Is Disco Elysium, Nothing Is Disco Elysium
Three studios led by former ZA/UM employees have been announced in a single day. None of them will make another Disco Elysium.
ZA/UM Official Merch Is Astonishingly Expensive
What it comes down to is that ZA/UM looks very different than it used to. Its socialist and communist lifeblood is all but gone, which is maybe why the studio has taken to selling extremely expensive merchandise under the ZA/UM Atelier label.
I will say, the majority of what it sells is beautiful – signed art prints, jewellery made by an independent Estonian brand, and made-to-order jackets and pants based on what Harry and Kim wear in the game. It’s all very pricey, but the website says that all items “are made to order and finished by the same seamstress to ensure the highest quality”. I can’t personally afford to drop almost 400 euro on a jacket, but if I could, I’d be happy to support a talented independent seamstress over a mass-producing corporation.
I can let all of this slide, because it’s expensive to create high-quality, handcrafted items. It’s basically gamer couture that supports small creators, and I can get down with that. But guys, I cannot get with the Disco Elysium plastic bag. I just can’t.
It’s worth noting that the Atelier was started in 2021, before the schism. The bag was listed last year.
Art Or Cash Grab?
I’ve been trying to wrap my mind about this since I read about it. The carrier bag is modeled after the bag Harry uses to collect bottles that he later trades for cash. It’s made from Dyneema composite fabric, which is “up to 15x stronger than steel on a weight-for-weight basis and provides the highest tear and tensile strength of any competing materials”, so it’ll never tear. It’s the same size as a regular plastic bag, so I assume you could put bricks in there without it stretching out, though I can’t imagine why you would. It’s basically an ultra-durable plastic bag you can wear over your shoulder. It’s made-to-order. It costs 159 euro.
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Five Disco Elysium successors, Jeremy? That’s insane.
I’ve been trying to justify this to myself. The material is extra fancy, so it won’t break. It could, I suppose, be styled for street fashion if you’re particularly sartorially-minded, though I have to emphasise, it has those classic plastic bag handles that make it look undeniably like what it’s meant to – a plastic bag. You could, and I’m really reaching here, consider it a sort of art project, maybe?
Let’s be clear. This is a consumer good made for people with disposable income, and ultimately materially harms nobody who wouldn’t be interested in it. But when you look at it in the wider scheme of things – ZA/UM’s ousting of its original team, the corporatisation of the company, the fact that Disco Elysium itself engages heavily with communist lines of thinking and hope for a better world – it’s an incredibly cynical thing for the studio to do. It’s the commodification of lower class aesthetics into couture, fuelling consumerism. It is, at its very core, against the entire spirit of the game itself.
It’s clear that ZA/UM isn’t ZA/UM anymore. We need to look elsewhere for our unashamedly political games from now on. Maybe one of the spiritual successors will provide it.
- Released
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October 15, 2019
- ESRB
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M For Mature 17+ due to Blood, Sexual Themes, Strong Language, Use of Drugs, Violence
- Developer(s)
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ZA/UM
- Publisher(s)
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ZA/UM
- Genres
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