The complaint from the Department of Justice (DoJ) claims that Adobe "hides" the true cost of its subscriptions in fine print, "behind optional textboxes and hyperlinks,” and deliberately makes cancelling a subscription "onerous and complicated" before it "ambushes" customers with termination fees.

The complaint further alleges that calls or live chats with Adobe support are often "either dropped or disconnected", breaking federal law, and then it takes aim at the executive suite. Maninder Sawhney, an Adobe vice-president, and David Wadhwani, president of digital media business, are named as having "directed, controlled, had the authority to control, or participated in the acts and practices of Adobe."

Adobe moved to a subscription-only business model in 2012 for its software suite, which is widely used both in the creative industries and by individuals. An Adobe "Creative cloud" subscription grants access to software including Acrobat, Illustrator, InDesign, Photoshop, Premiere, and more. 

"[The FTC] has taken action against Adobe and two executives for pushing people into subscriptions and then making it absurdly hard to cancel," writes FTC chair Linda Khan. "Adobe ambushed users with hefty 'early termination fees' and threw up obstacles when people tried to cancel.

"Adobe knew its policies made it extraordinarily difficult and frustrating for users who wanted to cancel their subscriptions [...] One person wrote 'Adobe literally will not let me cancel my subscription.' Because two senior executives were involved in overseeing, directing, controlling, or participating in Adobe's illegal business practices, they are named in the complaint."

The complaint has been filed in federal court in the Northern District of California by the DoJ, following a referral from the FTC. Among other choice language, it alleges Adobe "buries" its early termination fee and the amount (a whopping 50% of remaining monthly payments when a consumer cancels in their first year) in small print or by requiring "consumers hover over small icons to find the disclosures."

It says Adobe is aware of consumer "confusion" but nevertheless "continues its practice of steering consumers to the annual paid monthly plan while obscuring the [early termination fee]." It adds that the company forces consumers to "navigate numerous pages in order to cancel". Alternatively, they face "resistance and delay from Adobe representatives", and in some cases users who thought they'd cancelled subsequently found "the company continued to charge them."

These allegations certainly align with my personal experience. I used to have a copy of Photoshop that I'd mess around with, mainly to create bespoke header images for articles, before Adobe moved over to its subscription-based model. A few years later I needed to create an image, signed up for what I thought was a month's use of Photoshop, and ended up on the hook for hundreds of pounds. Just my opinion, but: Adobe deserves everything that's coming its way.

"Adobe trapped customers into year-long subscriptions through hidden early termination fees and numerous cancellation hurdles," said Samuel Levine, director of the Federal Trade Commission’s (FTC) Bureau of Consumer Protection. "Americans are tired of companies hiding the ball during subscription signup and then putting up roadblocks when they try to cancel."

Word of the closure came via Pieces Interactive's Twitter feed, which posted an image containing the studio's logo and the message "Pieces Interactive: 2007-2024. Thanks for playing with us."

The studio's website now carries the same image, as well as a longer message detailing the studio's history since its founding in 2007. "In 2017, Pieces Interactive were acquired by Embracer Group after working with the expansion for Titan Quest, Titan Quest: Ragnarök and third expansion for Titan Quest, Titan Quest: Atlantis," the message says. "Our last release was the reimagining of Alone in the Dark."

Pieces Interactive's Alone in the Dark reboot was good stuff. We called it "an intelligent reimagining of the 1992 classic" in our 76% review that, despite bugs and some occasional over-reliance on combat, delivered "the best Alone in the Dark game since 1992."

Despite that, the game apparently didn't sell very well. In Embracer's 2023-24 full year financial report, the company said sales of Alone in the Dark were "softer than expected," and "performed below management expectations."

Embracer's THQ Nordic division confirmed with PC Gamer that Pieces Interactive has been closed, but declined to comment further. 

The closure comes just three days after Galvanic Games announced its own shutdown due to inadequate sales of its most recent release, Wizard with a Gun; June has also seen layoffs and studio closures at Behaviour Interactive, Sumo Group, and Avalanche.

Kadokawa isn't Microsoft big, but it is still big, with revenue of about $1.65 billion in its last fiscal year. FromSoftware is one of Kadokawa's major earners, but the company also makes significant money in the manga publishing and anime markets (Delicious in Dungeon is one of its recent hits).

With games like Elden Ring selling more than 25 million copies, you'd think FromSoftware would be free of any meddling—why mess with the golden goose? But that logic hasn't saved other game studios from short-sided across-the-board layoffs at mega publishers like EA, 2K, Sony… the list goes on. So I asked FromSoftware president Hidetaka Miyazaki what he could say about FromSoftware's business relationship with its parent company, and whether From was at risk of the same fate that's befallen studios under the Embracer umbrella in the last year. 

"Speaking to myself and this company, I want to say that this is not something I would wish on the staff at FromSoftware in a million years," Miyazaki said. "I'm pretty sure our parent company Kadokawa understands that and shares that view."

So far FromSoftware hasn't just been immune to the layoff waves that have struck western game companies, but it's been expanding—the studio has grown significantly since it started Elden Ring, and is now big enough to develop at least two games simultaneously (as shown by last year's Armored Core 6). It's also not the only Japanese company in that position: this year Capcom made a point of raising employee pay rather than conducting layoffs (though Japanese wages are notoriously low, which may be one factor insulating them from layoffs).

During one of many brutal waves of layoffs this year, fans pointed to the two times former Nintendo president Satoru Iwata took a pay cut instead of laying off workers, a move no current game CEOs seem eager to replicate. But when we spoke, Miyazaki himself also cited Iwata's reasoning in 2013 for not laying off employees even when the company was operating at a loss.

"I think it was the old ex-president of Nintendo, Iwata-san, who said that 'people who are afraid of losing their jobs are afraid of making good things.' I'm paraphrasing that, but I totally share this view," Miyazaki said.

"I think it's true. And I think the people at Kadokawa, our parent company, understand that I hold this view very strongly. While we can't say 100%—we can't say with complete certainty what the future's going to hold for From and Kadokawa—at least as long as this company is my responsibility, that's something I would not let happen. So hopefully our players and our fans can take a little bit of assurance from that."

It's a strong statement, particularly next to the usual CEO lines about hard decisions and rationalizing pipelines.

"I’ve been in the public eye since my early twenties," writes Gates, "but much of my life before then isn’t well known. Over the years, I’ve often been asked about my upbringing, my time at Harvard, and co-founding the company. Those questions made me realize that people might be interested in my journey and the factors that influenced it."

Penguin's blurb for the book, which can now be pre-ordered, says "Source Code is not about Microsoft or the Gates Foundation or the future of technology. It’s the human, personal story of how Bill Gates became who he is today: his childhood, his early passions and pursuits. It’s the story of his principled grandmother and ambitious parents, his first deep friendships and the sudden death of his best friend; of his struggles to fit in and his discovery of a world of coding and computers in the dawn of a new era; of embarking in his early teens on a path that took him from midnight escapades at a nearby computer center to his college dorm room, where he sparked a revolution that would change the world."

Gates and Microsoft have been written about many times—I'd recommend the now slightly old book Accidental Empires—but his earlier life is the kind of thing that's more mythologised than most. It's perhaps not surprising that Gates describes "feeling like a misfit as a kid", as well as the more typical experience of "butting heads with my parents as a rebellious teen", before one of the biggest decisions of his life: dropping out of one of the most prestigious colleges in the world "to make a bet on an industry that didn’t really exist yet." There's no word on whether he'll delve into his early obsession with Minesweeper.

Finally: "I reflect on the luck I had to be born to a great family in a time of historic technological change and optimism, and to come of age just as the personal computer revolution was taking off."

Source Code will be published in February 2025 by Penguin. Gates says he plans to write two more memoirs, "one about my work with Microsoft and one about philanthropy. But Source Code is my origin story, and I’m looking forward to sharing it."

Car manufacturers, though, are the most prolific, with racing games showing off everything from the latest supercars to the humble Mini. French manufacturer Renault, then, has its cars featured in plenty of videogames already, but for its latest marketing push, to promote its Renault 5 E-Tech electric car, it's doing something a bit more novel.

It's been modding its car into a bunch of different of games, and while the list features the usual suspects like Roblox, Minecraft and Fortnite (I'm sure the kids are gonna go wild for a small, yellow electric car and immediately run out and buy the real one), Renault's modders have also snuck it into less obvious games, like Stardew Valley, Garry's Mod and Palworld (where, yes, you can enslave your very own pal-car hybrid). 

You can now replace the cat from Stray with a Renault 5 E-Tech, or explore an underwater world in Subnautica inside one—I don't recommend submerging one in real life, though. And the really surprising thing is that these aren't half-arsed efforts. 

The Stray skin has been given a futuristic overhaul, so it has Back to the Future-style tyres that flip into thrusters, while the Subnautica one looks like a wee sub, rather than a car that's just been flung into the ocean (for some reason its Nexus Mods listing has vanished, though). In Palworld, meanwhile, you won't just be capturing a sentient Renault 5; it's got a proper creature design, looking like a nightmarish combination of Transformer and Pokémon. 

Renault's Stardew mod is the most impressive one. Instead of just dumping a Renault 5 in Pelican Town, the modders have created a new location, Louis's Garage, where you'll be able to get to know Louis, a "mechanic, engineer and all-round handyman". Louis is pals with Clint and Robin, has four heart events and offers some quests. The mod page even teases that there might be more coming down the line, with new characters from out of town coming to visit Louis. Honestly, it sounds pretty cool. 

I don't like being marketed to and I'm generally opposed to videogames being used like billboards, but I can sort of get behind this. They're additive and actually seem pretty fun, and clearly the modders Renault commissioned are fans of the games—you don't get something like Louis's Garage otherwise. 

The mods can be found in a variety of places like Nexus Mods, Steam Workshop and through Fortnite and Roblox, while links and instructions can also be found on Renault's official "Modder5" page. 

• Avowed (Obsidian, 2018)
• South of Midnight (Compulsion Games, 2018)
• State of Decay 3 (Undead Labs, 2018)
• Fable (Playground Games, 2018)
• Indiana Jones and the Great Circle (Machine Games, 2021)
• Fallout 76: Skyline Valley (Bethesda Game Studios, 2021)
• Starfield: Shattered Space (Bethesda Game Studios, 2021)
• Doom: The Dark Ages (id Software, 2021)
• Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 (Treyarch, 2023)
• Diablo 4: Vessel of Hatred (Blizzard, 2023)
• World of Warcraft: The War Within (Blizzard, 2023)

Add in games from Microsoft's other studios—Gears of War: E-Day, Perfect Dark—and even without the third-party stuff like Assassin's Creed Shadows, it was a meaty show. It feels like we've truly arrived at the place Microsoft has been heading since it started using the "Xbox" name on Windows: Xbox is no longer a console, it's a game development conglomerate.

Hop back to E3 2017, and among the big Xbox conference games were Anthem (womp womp), Assassin's Creed Origins, Metro Exodus, Forza Motorsport 7, Sea of Thieves, Ori And The Will Of The Wisps, Middle-Earth: Shadow of War, and State of Decay 2. Some of those games were published by Microsoft, but only Sea of Thieves was developed by a studio that Microsoft owned at the time (it bought Rare in the early 2000s).

There was a lot more console talk, though. Around six minutes at the start of that 2017 conference was spent promoting the new Xbox One X with terms like "16 nanometer technology" and "7 billion transistors." That was three-and-a-half years after the original Xbox One launched. We're now three-and-a-half years removed from the Xbox Series X/S launch, and the only hardware news at this year's showcase was the brief mention of new Series X/S configurations at the end.

Microsoft has said that its next Xbox is going to be a powerhouse, and so I'm sure there'll be more transistor talk when it's time for that reveal, but the joke that consoles are just PCs for your TV is only getting more true. A more powerful Xbox won't change the fact that console exclusivity is on the way out (Nintendo excepted) and the multi-decade war fought by tech megacorps and their armies of enthusiast fans is effectively over. (You can still witness the occasional Xbox vs PlayStation squabble, but today's battles are really just reenactments.)

What's next for post-console war Microsoft?

So, Microsoft "won" summer showcase season, but what does that mean when Marcus Fenix and Kratos are both on Steam anyway? And why did Microsoft buy all these studios in the first place if its priority is no longer to sell Xboxes with exclusives?

One answer is that all these games will come to Game Pass, although I can't say that I know any PC gamers who aren't going to cling to their Steam libraries like life rafts. PC gamers were once resistant to Steam, too, so maybe Microsoft's right to go all-in on the subscription model, but it's a gambit.

If these developer acquisitions are just a means to grow Game Pass, then I worry about what happens to them if Game Pass doesn't grow as fast as Microsoft's shareholders like. The recent layoffs and studio closures certainly don't project security and stability.

Meanwhile, Microsoft's relationship with PC gamers has been spotty. We've alternated between feeling abandoned and neglected—particularly after it shunned us for its new Xbox baby in the early 2000s—or like it wants to exert too much control. Windows 8 just about had Gabe Newell in open rebellion.

Now PC gaming is the hottest thing around, and we've swung well into the latter position: glad that Microsoft has taken an interest, but worried that it might be too interested. We wanted Dad to pay more attention to us, not become the boss of our hobby.

We have definitely been getting along better in recent years: Windows 11 is fine (I wish its search function didn't suck), there are no more Xbox console exclusives, and Microsoft has mostly given up on making us use the Microsoft Store. But it's natural to feel nervous about anyone owning not just the OS most of us use, but also many of our favorite PC developers.

There are two emerging counterweights that I'm heartened by: The growing dominance of "weird little games", and the recent success of the Steam Deck, which shows that what it means to be a PC gamer can still evolve. 

As for Microsoft, the best case outcome to me would be that it really sees selling great games as an end in itself. I'm obviously skeptical—you don't have to buy Call of Duty to do that—but I at least don't get the sense that it's been pushing Obsidian, inXile, or its other recently-acquired studios to make aggressive gacha games. That Doom: The Dark Ages trailer at this year's showcase was sick, and I'm interested in Fable and Avowed and several of the other games we saw. There's a nervous energy around all of them—and the studios that are making them—but the future still feels open.

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Hey PC gamers, welcome back to the PC Gamer Chat Log podcast! We're officially on the other side of Summer Game Fest shenanigans, and the team is feeling pretty dang tired. Not only did we bring a ton of neat SGF coverage from the weekend, we've also been hard at work on the PC Gaming Show over the last few months, and it finally aired on Sunday! We hope you enjoyed what we had to show off.

While we take a bit of time to recover from announcement madness before we talk about it on the podcast (spoiler alert, that's next week's episode!) let's party up with Robin Valentine and talk all about gamer slang. He recently compiled a fantastic article that lists a whole bunch of gaming words and their meaning, which you should go and read before you listen!

If you're anything like me, you'll have found that bizarre little gaming terminology and acronyms have somehow found their way into your everyday vocabulary. Even if they haven't, you've no doubt typed some ridiculous words like "gank" or "nerf" at least once in your gaming career. Or maybe even a sentence like "Crosscut DP into FADC Plink combo." Words that certainly aren't in the bible and, to people who don't play games (or maybe even don't play a particular genre) sound like total gibberish.

We'll be talking all about them today, like which words have seeped into our vocabulary and which ones we think have fallen out of fashion. Make sure to pop over to the PC Gamer forums and share some of your own gaming slang favourites. We'll have a thread set up about this week's episode, and Lauren and I will be joining in on the discussion, too.

You can check out the PC Gamer Chat Log podcast on a whole bunch of podcast platforms:

• Apple Podcasts
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And more!

If you prefer some faces to go with your voices, you can also check out the podcast over on YouTube:

Don't forget to check us out over on the PC Gamer forums, too! We'll be checking in every week to see what you lovely lot have to say about each week's episode, and joining in the discussion ourselves.

Since 2019, A Disco Elysium sequel, a sci-fi RPG in a new setting, and a full-size Elysium spin-off game have been canceled or "paused," while a heated personal and legal dispute between founding members hangs over ZA/UM's every move. That last canceled game, described as "a spin-off about one of the most beloved characters in Disco Elysium" and spearheaded by one of the first game's principle writers, wowed other teams at the studio in an internal demo at the end of last year. It could have been on our SSDs as early as 2025. 

This project was cancelled in February, much to the shock of most ZA/UM employees, and nearly the entire team⁠—including that Disco Elysium writer, Argo Tuulik⁠— was laid off. I spoke with 12 current and former employees, including Tuulik and fellow X7 lead writer Dora Klindžić, to find out what went wrong. Studio ZA/UM itself did not respond to a request for comment in time for publication.

The fall

In late 2021, three of Disco Elysium's most senior developers, including the setting's original creator, Robert Kurvitz, lead artist Aleksander Rostov, and Final Cut lead writer Helen Hindpere, left the company on acrimonious terms. The ousted artists have alleged financial malfeasance on the part of company management, with much of their ire focused on Tõnis Haavel, a producer on Disco Elysium who had previously been convicted of investor fraud in the developers' native Estonia in 2014. ZA/UM studio management, meanwhile, insists that the three were fired for refusing to return to work and creating a hostile environment.

After the departure of Kurvitz and friends was revealed in 2022, fan sentiment largely aligned with the ousted creatives, with a backlash against ZA/UM escalating into harassment and threats against developers still at the studio. That situation cooled down somewhat with the release of People Make Games' 150 minute-long documentary on ZA/UM, which featured interviews with senior developers still at the studio who had worked on Disco Elysium.

Disco Elysium writer Argo Tuulik, a longtime friend of setting creator Kurvitz, gave a raw appraisal of the studio and the ousted writer's respective missteps, asking fans to let those still at the studio prove themselves with their work.

Tuulik and his team didn't get that chance: They were laid off from ZA/UM in February alongside nearly a quarter of the studio's staff, predominantly developers on Tuulik's now-canceled project, X7, which would have been a spin-off "standalone expansion" to Disco Elysium featuring some returning characters and an advancement of that game's distinctive conversation and "psychological RPG" systems. 

Tuulik and fellow X7 lead writer Dora Klindžić lay the blame for X7's end squarely with management, particularly Tõnis Haavel, while 10 other current and former ZA/UM developers spoke with me under anonymity. They described a confused, rudderless studio that expanded too quickly in the pandemic, struggled to adapt to remote work, and has canceled three projects as the afterglow of its triumphant debut faded in the intervening five years.

"Most hardcore Disco since Disco"

In the absence of a full sequel to Disco Elysium, X7 was going to be a spin-off⁠—smaller than Disco, but still full-scale⁠—headed up by Tuulik, someone who has been part of the Elysium creative project from the start and who wrote some of Disco Elysium's standout characters like the foul-mouthed urchin Cuno and the Hardy Boys, a vigilante militia whose frat boy veneer conceals a strange nobility.

"It was a spin-off about one of the most beloved characters in Disco Elysium," explained one developer who worked on the project. "I feel like it was the best possible shot at a Disco-like game without [Kurvitz], Rostov, and other people that made the original Disco Elysium."

Klindžić said, "It was something no one else but Argo could have done, and it would have been 110% authentic, most hardcore Disco since Disco." She added that X7 "would have advanced the story, the emotional threads, and gameplay elements all at once to truly evolve the genre of psychological RPG as Disco Elysium started it.

"For a while it seemed like miracles were possible, and with them, redemption."

The internal response to a company-wide showcase of the game at the end of 2023 seems to have been uniformly positive, with developers on other teams at ZA/UM telling me they were impressed with the demo. "Everyone was looking forward to its development," one of them said. "Its internal announcement lifted a lot of spirits after a rough time of bad press around the studio."

They also thought it was "exactly the sort of game [ZA/UM] needs to put out," and that it could "reassure fans that ZA/UM is not a husk, that the IP is in safe hands and that the studio is full of talented people with a genuine love for the world of Revachol."

My sources disagree on when X7 could have been ready for release, with some saying a 2024 launch wasn't out of the question, while others argued 2025 was more realistic. Klindžić, for her part, thought that with less interference from management, "it could have perhaps been a three-year development cycle start to finish." Project X7 began development in 2022.

One thing everyone I spoke to agreed on was that X7 was the closest major project ZA/UM had to release at the time of its cancellation, and that ZA/UM's main project in active development, codenamed C4, is still a long way out. The smaller-scale project M0 seems much closer to completion, but the mobile and tablet-oriented Elysium spin off, while well-received internally, doesn't seem to be the full Disco Elysium successor promised by projects Y12, C4, or X7.

X7 was promising: positively received internally and poised to be a long-awaited second outing from ZA/UM after a five or six-year wait since Disco Elysium. Multiple current and former employees also attest to ZA/UM president Ed Tomaszewski having assured staff in a December 2023 all-hands meeting that the studio was on strong financial footing, and that they did not have to fear the layoff crisis sweeping the industry. Two months later, X7 was cancelled and nearly a quarter of ZA/UM was laid off, primarily impacting the former X7 team.

Interference

Following the departure of Kurvitz, Rostov, and Hindpere, there seems to have been an understandable crisis at the studio. "Executive leadership and management did not provide any information about what was happening," said one developer who witnessed the transition. "It was very uncomfortable for everyone there." 

Work on a full Disco Elysium sequel codenamed Y12 was eventually halted⁠. My sources described flagging morale and a lack of direction after Kurvitz, Rostov, and Hindperre's departure leading to a decision to regroup on new projects.

Multiple sources describe the cancellation of Y12 as having caused friction between Tuulik, Klindžić, and management, with one stating that Y12 was cancelled without input from the senior writers, and that it looked like they were being "pushed out."

"In February 2022, I left my job as an academic physicist and space mission scientist in order to work on Y12, the sequel to a masterpiece, Disco Elysium," Klindžić said of this time. "Upon my arrival, I was told all the leads were gone and replaced, but this was framed as a good thing, a healthy thing. Four months later the project was shelved overnight. I began raising concerns, as I felt I had just abandoned my entire life and career only to end up in a studio where the people I had come to work with were fired, and the project I was meant to work on shelved with no reason given."

Tuulik and Klindžić were subsequently offered their own project, but under highly irregular constraints. 

"In August 2022, after production on the sequel was stopped, management approached Argo and I to come up with a pitch for a standalone expansion under the Disco Elysium label," said Klindžić. "We were given only around a week to come up with a fully-fledged game pitch, and we worked around the clock to come up with a new story, new characters, new gameplay mechanics, and a new creative direction, including an initial vision for design, art, and audio. We presented the pitch to management, it was a resounding success. It was greenlit and codenamed X7, and its initial production schedule was set for one year."

Tuulik, Klindžić, and everyone I spoke to who worked on X7 attest to it not having been allowed a pre-production period, the industry standard planning phase of developing a game. Making a game without pre-production is analogous to writing an essay without an outline, or building a house without blueprints. 

"We were set up to fail from the start and it was impossible to catch up," said Klindžić. "Whenever we raised concerns about this and expressed we needed more writers if the deadlines were to be met, we were accused of not wanting to do our jobs."

"Pretty much from the moment the writing team's pitch was approved in August of 2022, the other teams started production," Tuulik said. "We didn't even really know what the story or the characters were gonna be, when art teams were already making first character and environment concepts. I'm sure you can see how this is a big problem, when you're making a narrative-led game. 

"Essentially, the writing team had to work double-time from day one to supply other disciplines with work, whilst trying to write the first dialogues and sketch out the rest of the game at the same time. The writing team consisted of myself and Dora at the time."

A "be careful what you wish for" moment came for X7 with the cancellation of P1, a sci-fi RPG in development under Disco Elysium producer Kaur Kender, who after leaving the company sued ZA/UM with allegations similar to those from Kurvitz, Rostov, and Hindpere before dropping his lawsuit at the end of 2022. While the P1 writers added more hands to the project, X7's breakneck pace and lack of planning in pre-production led to Tuulik and Klindžić struggling to bring the new writers up to speed while still building the narrative of the game.

One thing that may have fundamentally doomed X7 was an issue of hierarchy: even though Klindžić and Tuulik pitched the project and effectively led development at the beginning, neither was formally designated X7's project lead. "I don't know if Dora and Argo ever felt in control," observed one ZA/UM employee. "You can't back people into corners and expect them to behave."

"I didn't ask for a title, because titles used to be meaningless back then," said Tuulik, noting that previously for ZA/UM, "writers who started projects had also been effectively leading them. 

"That's how it had been, and was at the time on other projects. That's how it was on X7 in the first four months, the most productive months."

"The work we were required to do throughout 2022 and 2023 was analogous to the work of other directors in the studio, but we were not given a title upgrade nor a wage adjustment to match," Klindžić said. "It resulted in a situation where I performed labor well outside my original role for the studio for over a year without being properly compensated or recognized for it."

That lack of specified roles seems to have quickly become a problem. Tuulik, Klindžić, and other members of X7 say there was fruitful collaboration between departments and good progress in the early months of development, despite the extreme workload taken on by the two-person writing team, and everyone I spoke to, both on the X7 team and outside, praised Tuulik and Klindžić as thoughtful, professional collaborators.

Klindžić and Tuulik described having been increasingly sidelined by management and unable to directly communicate with the X7 team⁠—ZA/UM had become fully remote, with most communication occurring through a company Slack⁠—while management introduced a new project coordinator/creative director the two had to go through instead of directly communicating with their colleagues. The two characterized much of this interference as coming from Tõnis Haavel, the Disco Elysium producer at the center of the company's dispute with Kurvitz, Rostov, and Hindpere. Indeed, according to Tuulik, toward the end of the project Haavel was officially the project's coordinator/director and "interim narrative lead."

"Nobody says that things are going to change," recalled one member of the X7 team, "But suddenly you have no more meetings with writers for some reason and you're not allowed to send them your work for feedback." Another ZA/UM employee who was not part of the X7 team told me that "in internal docs there was a lot of shifting around who was responsible for leading the project."

Klindžić characterizes this as a form of retaliation for Tuulik's statements in the People Make Games documentary: while the developer made a case for those still working at ZA/UM, he also criticized some of the studio management's decisions and expressed some admiration and understanding for Kurvitz. "I felt that a strong resentment developed towards Argo for growing too big for his shoes, so to speak," Klindžić said. "I got the sense that there was resentment for the fact Argo was getting so much support from fans, while [ZA/UM CEO Ilmar Kompus], Tõnis, and the company weren't.

"They put Argo through a humiliation campaign. They made him apologize to people for what he said in the interview. They undermined his confidence and tried to make him doubt himself. They told him he was incompetent, unqualified, and unfit to lead his own project, demoted him and made him invisible inside the studio."

A one-game studio?

X7's direction as laid out by management seems to have been incredibly fluid, with shifting targets including a 2022 Game Awards teaser to announce the game that was ultimately scrapped. Despite producing the well-received internal demo at the end of 2023, the X7 team has been laid off and the project cancelled.

Employees still at the company expressed confusion and frustration over the decision, especially considering president Tomaszewski's remarks regarding layoffs in 2023. One common sentiment among those I talked to was that it was just hard to tell if there was a problem on another project or even in a different department on the same project, such is the extent to which ZA/UM's employees are isolated from each other in its remote work environment.

ZA/UM expanded from 30 to 100 employees following the release of Disco Elysium, the sort of expansion that can drastically change the character of a company, and one that demands a commensurate increase in output to keep up with the costs. Five years later, the studio has canceled its major project that was closest to launch. It's unclear how much runway the studio has for an intensive, multi-year development cycle like the one demanded by project C4 without substantial new revenue coming in, while the legal battle with Kurvitz, Rostov, and Hindpere continues to haunt its every move.

And we'll never get to play X7, a follow-up to Disco Elysium masterminded by one of its principle writers, produced by a team that hit a major milestone and impressed its peers despite what they describe as a scrambled and untenable working environment. The livelihood of that team has been completely upended, and some developers' immigration statuses have been imperiled by their layoffs.

The developers I spoke to share the same sense of disappointment I do, that the idea of ZA/UM as a different kind of game developer, one driven by artistry and capable of pushing the medium forward with more games like Disco Elysium, was never meant to be. "For a supposedly 'leftist' company, this is a real mask-off moment," one current employee told me. Another mused that "We're not the first studio to go through that, it just feels worse when it's ZA/UM."

There's a quote from Disco Elysium itself that springs to mind here, one about capital taking off its mask of humanity to kill everything you love, but it feels a little on the nose.

"The entire X7 team loved the Elysium world⁠," Klindžić told me in our last interview. "As fan artists, musicians, iconic voices⁠, we only wanted to keep it going, rather than leave it to wither in some dark decrepit cellar of corporate intellectual property."

To developers, the unexpected closures sent a clear message: Making good, profitable games is no longer good enough. Public trust in Microsoft as stewards of the studios it spent years gobbling up has been shaken—what beloved, storied studio will Xbox suddenly decide to shut down next?

Hours after Microsoft's dazzling June showcase that debuted a new Doom, Perfect Dark, and Gears of War, PC Gamer sat down with Obsidian CEO and founder Feargus Urquhart, who premiered a new Avowed trailer during the show, to get his perspective on layoffs and Xbox ownership in 2024.

"It's just horrible," Urquhart said of Xbox's recent closures and layoffs. "At Obsidian we had to go through three layoffs [before being acquired]. They're right behind my parents' deaths as some of the worst days I've ever had, so no, these are just not great things."

Obsidian was one of the earliest acquisitions of Xbox's spending spree, joining the company in 2018. The beloved RPG maker has released two games under the Xbox label (Grounded and Pentiment) and is preparing to launch another. Urquhart knows that some fans are worried about what could happen to Obsidian in the current Xbox climate.

"Everything that's happened over the last six months with layoffs and the pinnacle of this stuff with Tango and Arkane and the other studios, it really has made people worried, and shaken," Urquhart said. "I think we just try to say 'Hey, this is what we're working on today, and we believe in it.' I'm not saying that [Tango and Arkane] didn't believe in what they're doing, but we just keep our heads down and move forward and say we're working on great games. We're working on Avowed, we're working on Outer Worlds 2. It's probably not a surprise—we have other stuff we're thinking about and looking at doing."

When asked if he still believes in Xbox as a good steward of its many acquired studios, Urquhart replied with an unqualified "Yes."

Urquhart said he's been encouraged by recent talks with other Xbox studio heads. They "talk a lot," in group chats and in person when possible, he said. With all of Xbox gathered in Los Angeles over the weekend, he described having dinner with around 14 other studio leaders.

"I think when we all talk, it's probably a good thing that we're all talking this way," Urquhart said, gesturing with forward motion. "You know, we're talking about the future and what we're accomplishing."

I put it another way: Obsidian is not watching its back?

"No, we're not watching our backs.

"Obviously there's been all this stuff that's going on, but I always go back to the conversation I had with Matt [Booty, head of Xbox Game Studios] in July of '18, as we just started the acquisition conversation," he said. "I don't feel like I have any different directive today than I did back then."

If anything has changed for Urquhart, it's that there are a lot more games competing for attention, and that adds "a little bit more pressure" to make better games.

"We're saddened by what happened. But as long as I'm doing my job, and doing it well, I'm not worried about tomorrow."

But Urquhart does think much further ahead, about what will happen to Obsidian after he's gone. "Me and my partners, we started Obsidian. And even though we sold it, it matters to me. Here's a shock: I probably won't be running Obsidian in 15 years," Urquhart laughs, "because I'll be almost 70. But I want Obsidian to be there."

Right now, Urquhart is focused on finishing his company's next big RPG, Avowed. He plans to share a solid release date soon, but 2024 is a lock.

League of Geeks said in December 2023 that a confluence of factors including "rapidly rising operation costs, a weakening [Australian dollar], poor early access sales, and the unprecedented withdrawal of funding opportunities across the industry" had forced it to lay off more than 50% of its employees. The launch of the turn-based grand strategy game Solium Infernum, which came out in February 2024, was not impacted, but plans for a full release of League of Geeks' next game, Jumplight Odyssey, were put on hold "indefinitely."

The situation has clearly not improved since then, as League of Geeks co-founders Trent Kusters, Blake Mizzi, and Ty Carey "have made the decision to put LoG into hibernation for the foreseeable future and take some extended time off."

"The vast majority of our team have moved on to exciting new endeavours and those who remain are going to take a well deserved break over the next few months," they wrote.

"We’re not sure when (or if) we will resurrect this great beast, but we’re incredibly proud of all we’ve achieved, both in the experiences we’ve crafted together, the great developers who made LoG a world-class development environment, the peers we inspired along the way, and of course, those community members who believed in what we made, how we made it, and supported us fiercely in those convictions."

League of Geeks' games "will remain online and will be supported during this period," but further development isn't in the cards. Armello, which has been out since 2015, "will continue to cruise along as it has for the past few years," and work on the Armello board game will continue uninterrupted. Solium Infernum, unfortunately, did not sell well enough to enable further development or the creation of DLC, although some bug fixes and "minor content" updates are expected.

As for Jumplight Odyssey, League of Geeks has been unable to secure investment for the game, and so it will remain "on hiatus." The team is still aiming to bring it out of early access sometime within the next 12 months, but added that it "is unlikely to be the fully realised v1.0 release we had originally planned, though we will try to find some way to tuck the game in with our limited, remaining resources."

It's a very positive spin—the Jumplight Odyssey development update goes so far as to refer to it as "taking a much needed break for the next few months," which actually sounds pretty nice—but it's clearly an unhappy and unwanted situation. League of Geeks' message explicitly notes "the economic situation in games" as the driving force behind the closure, and uncertainty about whether the studio will ever return to action suggests to me, at least, that this isn't a well-earned sabbatical, but rather an unavoidable consequence of a massive contraction that's absolutely decimated the videogame industry.

The League of Geeks co-founders alluded to that malaise in their conclusion: "Makin’ videogames is hard, excruciatingly hard these past few years, but the smart, lovely people we got to do it with, both inside LoG and out, made this crazy business worth it every single day. For our industry friends, we’re around. Let’s chat. <3"