ZA/UM has just issued a statement about the Kurvitz/Taal response.
‘Looting’, ‘stolen money’, and ‘crime’ are details that make for riveting reading but they are far from reality. We encourage [Kurvits and Taal] to bring their claims to a court of law where their baseless allegations will fall apart under legal scrutiny. Case in point: Mr. Kurvits and Mr. Taal are unable to get even one basic fact correct: Tõnis Haavel is not – directly or indirectly - a shareholder of ZA/UM Studio (the ownership records of which are held by NASDAQ).
The allegation Kurvitz and Taal have -actually- made before their most recent statement:
(…) Haavel and Kompus worked together to gain control of the company. Kompus made the €4.8 million purchase with money that should have been reserved for the studio and its shareholders to fund the sequel.
Even if it’s true that Kurvitz was impossible to work with and the workplace culture has improved, it must be such a miserable fate to toil over a game whose audience is primed to hate it while your bosses do everything to come off as shady corporate assholes in literally everything they do. A year ago, their social media person bragged about some “30 Under 30” recognition for her work - now, she has to suspend her private Twitter account basically every time she posts about Twitter: The Game on its official Twitter. When the game is revealed, I expect the company messaging to get even more obnoxious (stoked for some British game journos with ZA/UM access to start another round of the auteur theory discourse where no one ever talks about the same things).