Sacred Symbols+, Episode 249 | When Communism Meets Capitalism (Patreon)

Note:In order to include news from The Game Awards, Defining Duke will post on Saturday. Enjoy Sacred Symbols+ in its place.

An interesting industry story has been quietly percolating for months, but it's not been widely discussed, particularly anywhere close to the mainstream: ZA/UM -- the studio behind 2019's smash-hit Disco Elysium (which came to PS4 and PS5 in 2021) -- is seemingly melting-down. And, at first blush, it's a complicated tale. In fact, it's complex at second and third blush, too, which is why I (Colin) invited Last Stand Media's legal analyst and regular collaborator, Rick Hoeg of Hoeg's Law, back to the show. Together, we delve into the undoing of this team, one founded in Estonia and run as a "collective" before being disrupted by money and success. Key founding members and creative forces of the original game have been shown the door, and they claim fraud that, if true, would be one of the gaming space's biggest economic crimes ever. But it's not clear that their claims are true at all; indeed, there's plenty of contrary evidence. One thing's for sure, though: It's pretty damn ironic that a game designed to be a cutting critique of capitalism would potentially undo the very people who created it, a piece of cosmic fate they themselves can't help but admire. So let's try to make sense of this sordid affair, in what we think is the most comprehensive deconstruction of ZA/UM's trials and tribulations available anywhere on the Internet.