Dora Klindžić

Thank you for your thoughtful coverage, Duncan!

The curse of ‘Disco Elysium’, the greatest RPG ever made How the success of a singular video game led to crises for almost all its creators

For the FT this weekend, I wrote about the foundation and fallout of Disco Elysium: how two Estonian novelists' successes and failures in literature led to the creation of a video game masterpiece, and an endless font of strife.

www.ft.com/content/5ae5...

Really sorry to hear this, Nicole. Wish you the best.

If you're at Reboot Develop Dubrovnik, come ask us about starting fires.

Argo Tuulik (@mixedmartialarx) / X Argo Tuulik (@mixedmartialarx) / X

Argo's been giving some updates on his Twitter, I'd recommend scrolling back from November... x.com/mixedmartial...

Hi Ian, not sure if you saw, but Longdue has been involved in bankrupting Argo, one of the original worldbuilders of the Elysium setting. Their founder has been harassing us in our home to the degree where we had to go to the police. There's not much mention in the press.

bsky.app/profile/mixe...

Thank you, it means a lot.

2021 Recommended Reading on Cults & Thought Reform | Cult Research These are some of the best books & publications about cults, thought reform, & related topics. Some may be difficult to find, but worth the search.

Thank you, Ryan! I entered the topic through reading and listening to cult researchers Janja Lalich and Margaret Thaler Singer.

I recommend this podcast with Dr Lalich as an entry point: youtu.be/VQlmgC4S5ro?...

And here's Dr Lalich's reading list, great website: janjalalich.com/blog/recomme...

There are also 3 previous episodes where Argo talks through many aspects of Elysium, including never before told lore aspects. Martin Luiga's episode is great for that too. Overall a great podcast!

videogame fans when the latest commodity fetish drops

YouTube video by The 41st Precinct ZAUM The Inside Story: Part 1

Argo and I did a 16 hour podcast on it recently! youtu.be/BORV6qGgEPU?...

omg, just now realized your previous handle! I like the feeling of many happy returns on this website... I'm hanging in there, hope you are too. Glad to cross paths again.

Thank you!

YouTube video by The 41st Precinct ZAUM The Inside Story: Part 1

We also gave a podcast recently on 41st Precinct's channel about the behind the scenes happenings at the company -- the channel has previous episodes with Argo Tuulik & Martin Luiga with never before told Elysium lore as well! youtu.be/BORV6qGgEPU?...

After the ZA/UM redundancies in early 2024, we hosted the hottest part of the severance package: the layoffs party!

The layoffs party had one thing that ZA/UM itself has not managed to produce in 5 years: a succesful trailer.

As promised in the pod, here's the world premiere:

Part 2 is out. This one follows a nauseating journey through the corporate headfuck panopticon, a sacrifice for old friends' sake that sealed our hero's fate, a nightmare crunch, a betrayal, and the bitter-sweet dawn of open union warfare.

We've cast the pod over at the 41st Precinct's channel -- a proper audiobook length at a staggering 16 hours!

This is a story about game making, corporate corruption, reality-distortion fields and cultic organizations, and it is just the beginning.

ananas gang rise up 🍍

Thank you for asking! The legal fund is truly helping us level the playing field. Other than that, any sharing of the story helps. Thank you!

The idea for Moola was that he would file a lawsuit based on lies and try to force us into settlement by way of financial threats, so that the case would never get to the court hearing (8-10 months from now) where it will actually come out that he has lied to try to destroy our lives.

Exactly, the goal was to put Argo in a situation where he faces prison time for working on his own artistic legacy and to directly bankrupt us with an intent that Longdue could get ahead and crowdfund for their game. Moola is still making demands that SE should stop working and promote Longdue.

He's collaborating with ZA/UM management to sue and sabotage other studios, we have him on tape admitting that. Disco Elysium legacy is now just second world mafia vultures tearing at the carcass

Exactly. It was easy for Moola to deceive the court to obtain an injunction because he claimed his edu-tech company was an RPG company and a bunch of other lies under oath. We are preparing to prosecute him criminally for lying in court. Not to mention he sent people to our house daily for weeks

This will be bigger news when the coward stops hiding the court documents.

Combine that with a judge who is not familiar with the games industry, and you end up with a guy who can sue anyone who tries to make a "Disco-like" as if he invented it, when he doesn't own the IP in the first place and the genre already existed for 5 years.

Agreed, the "spiritual successor" branding was not something anyone was advertising with other than Riaz, who has zero claims to it. We never mentioned it anywhere in our PR, nor did Dark Math. He lied in court to the judge to explicitly claim he *invented* the idea of a Disco spiritual successor

They're going to have a lot of fun defending a lawsuit for libel, contempt of court and harassment for all the lying and abusive behavior Riaz Moola engaged in in order to insert himself into the story to claim the Disco Elysium legacy 🤷‍♀️ He's doing awfully in court so these are terrified PR attempts

I don't even think it is legally correct! Longdue never had a Disco writer (Argo and I were helping the CEO at a completely unrelated edu-tech company working on educational courses, before Longdue ever existed). They cannot produce a single contract between Argo & Longdue, yet they lie publicly...

And btw what you said is one of the best ways I have seen this put. People crave a clean, neat narrative. We have all been guilty of that, inside and outside of these influence bubbles. Unfortunately, when we look for simple answers, that's where manipulators thrive. Life is much more complicated.

I feel sometimes like the management who actually perpetrated the wrongdoing is unreachable to the fans, sequestered away in their rich people bubble, so they displace the aggression on the closest person who only reported the story in all its chaos and complexity.