• Disco Elysium is coming to Android in a vertical format.
• Controversial developer ZA/UM says this is intended to “captivate the TikTok user with quick hits of compelling story, art, and audio”.
• Some would argue that this may lead to developers building games purely with the intention of going viral on TikTok.

TikTok is infamous for – as some put it – ruining music. Over the years clips of songs have lead to the artists achieving monumental success in a short space of time. Artists like Willow Smith, Benson Boone and even the odd sea-shanty have found mainstream success after catching attention on TikTok.

However, this has lead to musicians crafting songs with the goal of having them appear on TikTok. As a result there has been a flood of artists who create music solely for the purpose of going viral on TikTok.

We lay all this out because that trend could soon become a part of gaming.

As reported by Eurogamer, ZA/UM, developer of the hugely popular (and controversial) Disco Elysium is bringing the game to smartphones and it intends to capture the hearts and minds of TikTokkers.

“We intend to captivate the TikTok user with quick hits of compelling story, art, and audio, ultimately creating an all new, deeply engaging form of entertainment,” said studio head Denis Havel.

What does that mean exactly? Well you’ve heard of vertical video, now get ready for vertical gaming.

“Mobile players deserve deep, story-rich experiences, like Disco Elysium. With profound respect for the original’s artistry and meaning, we move forward as both custodians and creators, bringing this masterpiece to new and returning players alike. We want you to fall in love with Disco Elysium on your phone – all over again,” the head of ZA/UM said.

We’ll speak frankly, this looks awful.

Despite our jesting, vertical games really aren’t anything new, a game like Disco Elysium doesn’t strike us as the sort of title that can benefit from having 70 percent of the display removed. We could be wrong but it just looks, odd. Luckily, the first two chapters of the game will be free to play so we can at least test it before we part ways with our money.

The developer also notes that Disco Elysium for Android can be played in short bursts to align with how people play games on mobile.

There is already a thriving community of gamers on TikTok sharing clips of the titles they play and until now, they’ve been just fine cropping videos from 16:9 to 9:16. We are concerned that if this experiment works, more developers create games centred around going viral on TikTok.

We truly don’t need the popification of nursery rhymes happening in gaming.

The morality of it all

Unfortunately we can’t talk about Disco Elysium without talking about the horror that unfolded at ZA/UM.

Despite being lauded as one of the best games of the modern era, the studios founder, Martin Luiga as well as key staff were ousted from the company without warning. What followed was an exchange of blows between ZA/UM and former employees with the former suffering the worst reputational damage given that it was accused of fraud.

In solidarity with the original developers, reviews for Disco Elysium were bombed and the developers who had been ousted encouraged gamers to pirate their creation. At one point one of the original developers of the game even uploaded the source code to GitHub but it has since been removed.

Some folks would argue that it’s ethical to pirate Disco Elysium and while that may be true, legally it could land you in trouble. Enterprising individuals may use a VPN to hide themselves when downloading a torrenting application before finding a reputable piracy website where they can download the game for free using a torrent file or magnet link.

That would make it hard for the long arm of the law to reach those individuals who likely take privacy and the security of their systems very seriously. Pre-registration for the TikTok version of Disco Elysium is currently open via the Google Play Store.