Disco Elysium fans blast 'absolutely demonic' ZA/UM execs for new photo mode: 'it wasn't enough to rob the creators of their own work, you had to turn it into this meme ridden sludge, too'

pcgamer.com:

Disco Elysium got an unexpected addition last week: A brand-new Collage Mode(opens in new tab) that lets you arrange the game's characters however you like, add stickers and custom text, and generally build a whole scrapbook of snaps. 

But what might initially seem like a novel, harmless add-on has gone down like a lead balloon with a lot of fans, who see it as a hamfisted attempt by ZA/UM to distract players from the ongoing and bitter legal conflict(opens in new tab) between Disco Elysium's departed lead creatives—Robert Kurvitz, Helen Hindpere, and Alexander Rostov—and the company's current leadership, whom the former lead devs accuse of using funds «stolen» from ZA/UM to actually buy out ZA\UM from under them. Company CEO Ilmar Kompus, and others named by the former lead devs, deny the accusations, but plenty of fans back Kurvitz, Rostov, and Hindpere to the hilt.

In that context, Collage Mode struck fans less as a fun, frivolous addition to a game they love, but as an attempt by ZA/UM's current owners to cynically leverage people's affection for Disco Elysium's characters and distract them from an ongoing injustice, and a way to strip the game of its anti-capitalist politics and turn it into a vehicle for shipping and memes.

«You people have one product, because you stole it,» said Twitter user Quendergeer(opens in new tab) in response to the Collage Mode announcement tweet, "[you] know you will never produce anything with 1/1000th the artistic merit yourselves so now you have to grind it down for fertilizer". Another, Qualtrop(opens in new tab), wrote «Of course it wasn't enough to rob the creators of their own work, you had to turn it into this meme ridden sludge, too». 

Too many users to list by name simply