Workers at Disco Elysium studio ZA/UM have unionized in the form of the newly-created Workers’ Alliance, becoming the first officially-recognized UK gaming union into the bargain.
As reported by the folks at GamesIndustry.biz, the ZA/UM Workers’ Alliance will legally represent only a portion of the studio’s overall workforce, since it only applies to the UK arm of a company that also has offices in Portugal and Finland.
Nevertheless, marketing manager Poppy Ingham says the union was set up in order to give employees “a seat at the table in the big management meetings”. She says ZA/UM workers “like being here” and “want to continue being here”, and she wants the studio to be “a collaborative project between the workers and management”.
Although the new union only represents UK employees at the moment, Ingham says meetings are “completely open” to employees from other ZA/UM branches, and that those employees can “feed in” on the Workers’ Alliance’s activities.
According to Ingham, ZA/UM management has agreed to negotiate and consult with Workers’ Alliance on issues that “ensure the general safety and care of employees”, including pay rates, holiday time, and working hours.
The formation of the union at ZA/UM follows the cancellation of a project at the studio back in early 2024, which was itself accompanied by a round of layoffs. Ingham says it’s these layoffs, “unfortunate” though they were, that “spurred [the remaining workers] on” to create Workers’ Alliance.
ZA/UM has been racked with controversy since key figures Robert Kurvitz and Aleksander Rostov departed the studio in 2022, with both claiming their departures were a result of being forced out by unscrupulous investors.
Since then, a number of key Disco Elysium personnel have announced their own spiritual successors to the critically-acclaimed RPG.
Additionally, ZA/UM itself has also unveiled Zero Parades – For Dead Spies (which was probably formerly known as Project C4), a game that looks very much to be in the same realm as Disco Elysium.
