Tl;DR: Group of friends made a RPG setting & book, and then decided they wanted to turn it into a game. All with heavy anti-capitalist, leftist themes. But they needed money to make game, so they brought in some investors who later fucked them over and forced the original creators out so they could make even more money.
Gross ass reddit link, but seems to explain it well enough:
https://www.reddit.com/r/OutOfTheLoop/comments/xujjrd/whats_going_on_with_disco_elysium/
Tl;DR: Group of friends made a RPG setting & book, and then decided they wanted to turn it into a game. All with heavy anti-capitalist, leftist themes. But they needed money to make game, so they brought in some investors who later fucked them over and forced the original creators out so they could make even more money.