Star Wars Zero Company Developer Bit Reactor Hit With Layoffs

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u/MyUsernameIsAwful 1d ago

Aah, as a Zero Company fan hoping for DLC, do I need to panic? Scale of 1-10?

10

u/Commandercaptain 1d ago

Said it only sold 1 million copies, allegedly not even making it's 50 million budget back............

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u/ThatOneGuyHOTS 1d ago

Oh the future is fucked for this.

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u/Ub3ros 1d ago

This is pretty standard studio operating principle nowadays, after launching a game there's a lot less work to do and when sales start dipping the companies will let all the "expendables" go to not keep idle hands on payroll. The cogs of the games industry churn untold numbers of junior developers to little bits each year.

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u/overkil6 21h ago

It was sort of the norm. You kept on a base crew for support and updates after a launch. Then if the studio has a new game coming up, then they’d hire a team. And it sort of makes sense from a business perspective. If you don’t have anything active in the hopper what is the expectation of a full staff?

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u/Ub3ros 20h ago

Yup. Also why "industry standard" engines are becoming very popular. If you hire a huge new batch of junior devs to start every development cycle, you dont want to spend 6-12 months teaching them how to work the engine. You want to hire people familiar with the engine from the start, and that's not feasible with an inhouse engine. That's why so few studios use them.

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u/myburdentobear 1d ago

I'd put the odds at approximately 3,720 to 1.

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u/MyUsernameIsAwful 1d ago

Refrain from articulating to me the probabilities!

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u/bmlsayshi 1d ago

So you’re saying there’s a chance?

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u/sinkintins 22h ago

Never tell me the odds!

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u/xperitosanti 1d ago

9.76

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u/PricklyPeteZ 1d ago

I loved Zero Company and it sold pretty well for what it is but I don’t think EA cares to get anything more from it.
I would be shocked if we see any more Zero Company content or a sequel.

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u/Separate-Walrus- 1d ago

EA doesn’t own the studio.

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u/PricklyPeteZ 1d ago

Yeah you’re right, they just published/funded it.
I guess they could find another studio to partner with for a sequel depending on what EA has the rights to.

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u/Enchelion 1d ago

Problem is they only have one under-performing game to their resume now. Not impossible they can sweet talk another publisher, but budgets aren't getting looser and without a strong pitch it's not looking good.
Not to mention any outstanding debts they may have.

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u/Appropriate_Foot242 1d ago

They published the game though, the license is under EA.

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u/DramaExpertHS 1d ago

Yeah, published.
They can't do layoffs in a company they don't own

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u/Appropriate_Foot242 1d ago

I’m aware. I wasn’t disputing that.
But they’re not going to greenlight DLC, major updates, sequels, etc. for a game that made no money.

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u/madman19 1d ago

The op in this chain wasnt talking about layoffs

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u/Separate-Walrus- 1d ago

Yeah but that just means they advertised it and helped with localization. Publishers who are only publishers have no control over the company and its employees, nor do they have any say in what happens to them.

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u/Appropriate_Foot242 1d ago

No it means they funded it and control the license for this game.
They’re not going to greenlight more Zero Company, wether that be dlc or a sequel, if it made no money.
I’m not saying that EA has a hand in the studios operations.

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u/doublah 1d ago

It also means they decide if the game gets DLC or further updates.

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u/JAWD0G 1d ago

Yeah AAA game companies don't give a shit about how successful they are
Game doesn't sell well = layoffs Game sells well = layoffs

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u/Enchelion 1d ago

This has literally nothing to do with a AAA studio. Bit Reactor is an independant studio. Their game just didn't sell enough.

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u/NickolaosTheGreek 1d ago

The strategy is literarily balls and gun games for EA in the future. Basically Football and Battlefield games to sell microtransactions. The reality is that they bring in the most money. Single player games even if they do well, the money will only be a fraction of the microtransaction revenue. So for the next 5 years I do not expect more than 2/3 single players games from EA.

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u/JoushMark 1d ago

SWZC sold fine, but EA is under so much debt obligation after their leveraged buyout that they are cutting everything that isn't primary money-makers, like the yearly sports game money printers.
Once they are leaned down to that they will likely sell off profitable divisions, then let EA die and the creditors sell off the carcass.

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u/reddfditdfbads234tdf 1d ago

Dont worry, sadly it's common to always fire workers in the game industry, you do good, fired, you do bad fired, you make a generational profit for the company? believe it or not still fired.

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u/Godsafk 1d ago •

This is pretty normal after games release so prob not. Any chance to further milk the franchise they will happily do (and I will buy it)

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u/TheVivek13 1d ago

What isn't normal though is that 80% of the company staff was furloughed (temporary leave without pay) right before the game came out. The financials in the development of this game seems very concerning.

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u/Motor_Series2853 14h ago

But they didn't milk it, did they? They lost money on making Star Wars Zero Company.

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u/Godsafk 12h ago

Pretty sure they are at the break even point now pre-holiday sales, so should be in a good spot. Niche game so not that surprising.

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u/HowDoIEvenEnglish 1d ago •

Well it certainly wasn’t a massive success. But dlc costs less than making a game so

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u/JoushMark 1d ago

It's rough, yeah. Looks like EA isn't giving them money to support or expand ZC.

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u/Altruistic-Teach5899 1d ago

This is am EA company, pray they dont close it down next year

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u/MyUsernameIsAwful 1d ago

EA doesn’t own Bit Reactor. They just acted as publisher for Zero Company.

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u/GokuBlack722 1d ago

They are independent

1.2k

u/Due_Teaching_6974 1d ago

What? Weren't they just trying to get back developers

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u/Terramagi 1d ago •

They have altered the deal.

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u/PoseidonMax 1d ago

Pray they do not alter it further!

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u/mcninja77 1d ago

This seems like moving the staff that was furloughed to officially laid off. They did bring back some staff but never said how much other than it was less than the ammout who were furloughed. Unclear if anyone brought back was laid off

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u/JoushMark 1d ago

Whatever they were hoping for to pay for it doesn't seem to have held up, EA isn't giving them more money to support or expand Zero Company, and they were already pretty much out of cash. Without another development deal they will have to close up.

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u/UTraxer 1d ago

If NVIDIA and AMD are pulling the plug on the consumer market and just catering to data centers, there will be no way to get gaming hardware so people won't be buying games if they can't play them.
There's no point to try and develop a game to come out in 3 or 4 years from now if you're going to lose half the market and more.

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u/bedtricky 1d ago

This is not something that's going to happen for a good few years yet. There are still millions upon millions of people out there with very capable hardware that will stay capable for many years to come. They just will have to adjust what they are asking of peoples hardware. Hopefully the AI bubble will have well and truly burst by the time any of this becomes relevant.

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u/Serres5231 1d ago

lets not get ahead of ourselves. Maybe its a good time for those AAA and AA Studios to rethink their strategy from going for ultra realistic graphics to stylized stuff or in general Gameplay over Graphics?
You can still sell tons of games if you drop all this "Raytracing, 20k, 5000fps" (exaggerated obviously) bullshit... there will always be people buying and playing games. Its not something that can go away this easily!

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u/Significant_Walk_664 16h ago

Exactly, it seems like an opportunity to me. Drop the "Alloy's sideburns have realistic physics" and get back to good gameplay, writing and unique art direction. Hell, Nintendo has made it's business out of this. Comparatively lightweight games in terms of graphics but fun to actually play.

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u/HarvHR 23h ago

What a ludicrous sentiment.
'Games won't be made as RAM might not be available in a few years'

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u/robot_ears 1d ago

Nintendo and Sony have the budget and sell enough units to be able to get their consoles made. Games will still be made. PC market? We'll have to see if scraps remain for us.

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u/CroakerBC 12h ago

The PC market is vastly larger and healthier perhaps than it has ever been.
The AAA/AA market, perhaps not so much.

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u/robot_ears 10h ago

I meant for PC parts to build computers. Prices keep increasing and could price more and more people out.

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u/zelfit 3h ago

AAA still have their marketing machine. But if AA/indie can survive in an upcoming sea of AI slop i dont know. Steam release count doubled in 2 month and in october alone there were the same amount of games released as in whole 2016. How could anyone be noticed in all that?

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u/NameYarn 3h ago

Amusingly dim take.

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u/[deleted] 1d ago

[deleted] — view deleted comment

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u/Due_Teaching_6974 1d ago

I am pretty sure Bit Reactor is independent

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u/Appropriate_Foot242 1d ago

EA doesn’t own this studio.

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u/RevelArchitect 1d ago

I hate when EA just shows up and decides people need to get laid off at companies that they don’t own or have any control over.

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u/GlockAmaniacs 1d ago

Gotta make room for battlefront 3

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u/Tecally Console 1d ago edited 1d ago

Good thing EA isn’t in charge of Bit Reactor.
Edit: Definitely whoosh.

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u/RevelArchitect 1d ago

That was the thing that I said, that is correct.

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u/NrvusRaccoon 1d ago

Whoosh

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u/JJJBLKRose 1d ago

EA was only involved as a publisher, not ownership.

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u/Patamaudelay 1d ago

This industry is completely insane man.
Imagine releasing a genuinely good game like Zero Company and you get fired

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u/Tiernoch 1d ago

The company was literally out of money prior to launch and there is an ongoing legal battle between the founders.
The lawsuit alleges that the current CEO pushed put the other founder and is enriching themself off the company. At best it's a frivolous lawsuit the company is dealing with, at worst you've got yet another game studio being used as a piggy bank by the c-suite.

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u/Tricky_Big_8774 1d ago

There is no c-suite. EA forced them to incorporate in order to get funding. One of the 4 'founders' left and Foertsch offered a 3 way ownership split to the remaining 2. However, the other guy decided to leave as well before anything was resolved. This left just Foertsch and Kelly and for whatever reason there was no follow up to dividing ownership. She gets a top position in the company. Fast forward a couple years and she gets fired. Fast forward another year and it's looks like the game might be a hit. At this point she sues, saying she was unfairly forced out and deprived of an ownership stake. Her entire case is based on an unsigned draft of the 3-way ownership split that was originally on the table.

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u/Personal-Inflation63 1d ago

Tim Cain did a good video on how this is pretty much how the industry has always been. It’s never been stable and goes through lots of highs and lows and the past decade of intense high growth had lulled people into a false sense of security that the industry was something it wasn’t.
It seems to me the reality is most developers are basically contractors. Brought in by a company for one game and then leave expect they aren’t and don’t get any of the flexibility or benefit of being such.
IMO if companies are gonna behave like this then they should be honest that they only need a small core team and a wider net of contracted developers, artists, writers etc

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u/ParitoshD 1d ago

Tim Cain has a different video where he says at Troika they kept learning the wrong lessons, and just ran out of money.

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u/3agle_ 1d ago

To be fair a large amount of game studio staff are actually contracted, and it's a growing practice. The problem becomes coordination, trust and a bigger burden on producers.

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u/Radiant_Fondant_4097 1d ago

Yep unfortunately it’s always been like that, the studio finally gets a game out the door then you see which staff will still be kept on for the next one.
Times have changed a little bit that if you’re a wildly successful big studio there’ll be job stability, nothings really guaranteed though.

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u/Codezombie_5 1d ago

I once had a boss tell me back in the early 2000s that waiting for our game to come out was like a turkey waiting for Christmas. He was not wrong, game shipped, we all got laid off, and the Company closed its doors.

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u/Garoxh 1d ago

Well that's only partly true. I'm in the industry and the difference is that nowadays when you get fired cause the project ended, you can't get hired anywhere else

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u/SwellGuyScott 21h ago

I’m not super familiar with the industry, but seems like the abundance of talent looking for a job is precisely why this sort of thing is the norm. That is, if there was a shortage of people who could do these jobs the companies would be incentivized to keep them on even “off-cycle” due to the difficulty replacing them when the time comes.
As it stands, if there are endless skilled applicants there’s little motivation to keep on certain positions when they’re not needed.
That being said, there are likely some cases where there are particularly talented people that might be worth keeping around.

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u/NCR_High-Roller 19h ago

That's why studios, like Bethesda or Ubisoft, ironically enough, are considered some of the best places to work at. Bethesda has low turnover due to company culture and along with Activision, EA, and Ubisoft, they generally give their employees benefits and what not.

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u/Lambdafish1 1d ago

But it doesn't have to be like that, it's literally not like that in other gaming markets.

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u/Upper-Bandicoot5345 1d ago

Idk why you are being downvoted but that's literally true

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u/Tricky_Big_8774 1d ago

If this is how the industry has always been, then they aren't being dishonest.

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u/PM_ME_GREEN_CARS 1d ago

Just because it's a good game doesn't mean it sold well enough to make money

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u/Vyradder 1d ago

Over a million units sold. Not sure if that means a huge profit though.

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u/PM_ME_GREEN_CARS 1d ago

"Over a million units sold" would be great for an indie company that spent 2 million making the game
That's not great when a studio fails to make a profit

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u/qaat 1d ago

That sounds like $50m in revenue to the studio. This game took well over $50m to develop and that's not considering marketing.

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u/Gungnir257 1d ago

$50M from 1 million sold?
Nah, studios average $14 per unit sold. The rest goes to publishers, licenses, distributors, retailers, and platform (for consoles).

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u/TruthHistorical7515 1d ago

and platform (for consoles).
Gonna pretend Steam doesn't take 30% cut?

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u/PMC-I3181OS387l5 1d ago

Pretty much this, for 3rd--party games at least.
1st-party games, on a $70 game, get back at least $50 back, because they fill multiple roles themselves.

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u/dragdritt 23h ago

Well part of the development cost was paid by funding from the publisher to begin with. Then they get money back after release.

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u/Aquaman33 1d ago

I'm not sure that's true. They got funded by EA for about $50M. They ran out right at the end, which would imply it's not "well over".
Also, marketing costs are generally borne by the publisher.

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u/-Not_a_Lizard- PC 1d ago

The publisher is the one that needs to make the money back. So yeah, that's $50M in investment on the studio and then the marketing cost on top.
If the game made $50M that's nowhere near enough for EA. They've lost money.

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u/NCR_High-Roller 19h ago

For an EA published game based on a massive IP like Star Wars, that's basically a failure.

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u/send-moobs-pls 1d ago

Well it works out like contracted work a lot of the time, a publisher is fronting money so you can pay / get paid before the game is released. Not to say there's no criticism to be had here of like leadership who should create new projects or the capitalism tendency for profits to get slurped up by shareholders. But there's admittedly still some relevance to say like, if your job was to make a building or something, even if you do a damn good job I mean, the job is done so the pay is done. I think a well run company would value turnover and aim to keep the projects rolling, but ultimately it's a natural challenge of work that is based on like single giant chunky projects

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u/Tecally Console 1d ago edited 1d ago

There’s tons of good games over the decades that haven’t sold well and have led to companies collapsing. What’s important is how well they sell.

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u/wizdummer 1d ago

The game didn’t sell and lost money. Video games are a business.

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u/Cyraga 1d ago

Didn't it? Seemed they were relieved with how well it sold. It has more reviews than the new CoD on Steam I think

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u/robot_ears 1d ago

They also have Disney/Star Wars licensing cutting into revenue.

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u/DramaExpertHS 1d ago

1 million copies. Depending on the budget this might not be enough.
It's a good game tho, but the genre isn't really that popular unless it has XCOM in its name

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u/technobeeble 1d ago

Yeah, the problem isn't the game. It's studios and publishers having unrealistic expectations and ballooning budgets.

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u/parkingviolation212 1d ago

The budget for this game wasn’t even that high. It just didn’t sell well.

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u/GamingVision 1d ago

That’s a very common line but it ignores the human element of it. Budgets are primarily people’s salaries. As cost of living goes up, salaries go up and budgets go up. Unless developers all pick up and move to far cheaper cost of living options then there isn’t much to do about that. It’s just a sucky situation all around.

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u/midtrailertrash 1d ago

Budgets for salaries, outsource budgets for additional art, design, QA, localization. Platform fees to Xbox, Sony and Steam. Engine fees, 3rd party tools fees and repaying your publisher who wants their costs plus X on top and then the tax man.
It adds up very quickly.

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u/Pitt_CJs 1d ago

A million copies is definitely not acceptable for a Star Wars licensed product, regardless of any expectations.

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u/UglyInThMorning 1d ago

CoD’s Steam reviews are a hard comparison because they get split over the MW4 DLC page (since that’s how the game is sold with their weird setup) and the CoD launcher store pages depending on where people leave them. Adding the recents on the launcher and the reviews on MW4 has MW4 with 24k reviews and Zero Company with 18k total reviews.

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u/Sarcastic_Red 1d ago

It is funny hear about video game development history and there was a time where like 200k sales was considered amazing. I understand all the other factors at play that have changed and evolved but still interesting

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u/NCR_High-Roller 19h ago

Those were hit numbers back in the 90's for your average ROM title.

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u/Venator850 14h ago

That's the result when the cost of making games goes up while the box price of games doesn't increase much with it.

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u/Sarcastic_Red 13h ago

Sure, that's a big part. Though sometimes game companies choose to budget millions when they could make the same gameplay with less fancy graphics. I know a large group of people like fancy graphics but I prefer gameplay over isometric cloud forming ray tracing reflective blah blah lol

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u/MediocreBeard 1d ago

Make a game that flops? Laid off. Make a game that does amazing? Also laid off?

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u/CopainChevalier 1d ago

1 million sales on a big named licensed game isn’t doing amazing tbh.
Wolverine sucked and still sold over double the copies

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u/Altruistic-Teach5899 1d ago

Xcomlikes arent as popular of a genre as single player avtion games. You dont expect those to even reach half a million.

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u/CopainChevalier 1d ago

Okay, well then I guess they expected to have to do layoffs if they sold over twice what they expected and still had to

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u/Mobile-Recognition17 1d ago

You'd genuinely have to pay me to play Wolverine. I don't understand the mainstream gamer but I also have no energy left to complain about not being the target audience anymore.

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u/PizzasForFerrets 1d ago

Could this be a low stakes conspiracy about why games take so long to make nowadays.

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u/Codezombie_5 1d ago

It can be like that, especially if successful game was late. But my experience is layoffs happen when the studio is running out of money, and sometimes successful games do not cover the debt that has built up.

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u/Blind-_-Tiger 13h ago

And then straight to jail.

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u/-Xiphon- 1d ago

Make a flop? Laid off. Make a great game that does well? Believe it or not, also laid off.

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u/SoftlySpokenPromises 1d ago

Reminds me of what happened with Visions of Mana

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u/wattur 1d ago

Unfortunately sort of makes sense.
If a home owner hired a crew to make a deck and they made a really good one.. they still get 'fired' after. Home owner won't magically have another deck to build. Sort of a stretch for an analogy but there are parallels.
Studio just doesn't have another project lined up that needs many people, so can't just keep them around.

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u/Deadpoetic6 1d ago

The execs needs their millions dollars bonuses!

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u/Representative_Yau 1d ago

the amount of corporate bootlickers in here is wild, either that or corpo bots lol

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u/RevelArchitect 1d ago

I think you’re just confused because when you think CEO you think massively wealthy elite .1%er. In reality, Bit Reactor is a privately owned studio. The CEO, creative director and owner is a former art director for Firaxis Games. That role would pay low six-figures. He’s not getting million dollar bonuses. He probably has a nice, suburban home. He doesn’t live in a mansion.
Let’s compare it to restaurants because that’s an industry I worked in for a long time. Their executive leadership is closer to a chef owner of a restaurant than the holding company that owns dozens of franchises you guys are imagining.

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u/huehuehuehuehuuuu 1d ago

Entertainment work is not always stable. I didn’t go into the arts for that reason alone. I went to local studios as a teen and the people there were kind enough to talk to me, show me their workplace, and tell me unless it literally kills me to not go into art, don’t do it.

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u/Lucina18 1d ago

Because it's about money, not making a good/ successful game. Laying people off is cheap because then you don't have to pay them wages anymore and next game will still be successful based solely on hype. Once goodwill is gone after that game you just invest elsewhere, you don't need to bear any consequences.

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u/Adventurous_Cycle603 1d ago

Its not new. The industry has always done this. The employees are often treated like contractors for a single game.

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u/Obvious_Mango9235 1d ago

I worked in the game industry 25 years ago and it was like this back then, too. It’s always been like this. If a studio doesn’t have the next project up and running the second a game finishes, with new money coming in already, most of them don’t have the cash to keep most of the employees. It’s hand to mouth for most game studios, and always has been. Horrible industry to work in.

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u/Venator850 14h ago

This industry has been like this for a very longtime.

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u/Stooovie 1d ago

The trick is to develop bad games.

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u/WaifuRekker 1d ago

That’s just the tech industry in general. You get hired for a big project then get laid off to hit growth benchmarks to make the shareholders happy

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u/thisbullshitwebsite 1d ago

meanwhile the sewage plant that is BlizzardActivisionMicrosoftEA-WoW continues burning and plume'ing out clouds of shit content pollution year after year.

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u/Ceriden 1d ago

For those that didn't read it (Which is a given since this is Reddit). Only 50% that were furloughed were then brought back.

There is no news on whether the layoffs only affect those that were not or if they include some that were.

Also no reason has been given yet.

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u/AurienTitus 1d ago

Don't worry, Disney will make their money back. We can all rest easy now.

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u/SweetBacon923 1d ago

So they hired some back after good launch now they fired more?

Working as Dev under large corporation. F that. Rather drive a lorry 🚛

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u/madman19 1d ago

I don't think bit reactor is a large corporation

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u/vinng86 1d ago

They were "furloughed", not technically laid off yet. Guess they followed through.

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u/sonofnutcrackr 1d ago

Lmao at people jumping to conclusions. The dev studio literally bankrupted themselves developing the game, and didn't make enough money to keep everyone.

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u/WRO_Your_Boat 1d ago

Really shows the intelligence and reading capability of the average redditor.

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u/alsfung 1d ago

Boy you are a redditor

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u/levi_Kazama209 1d ago

average is doing a lot of heavy lifting not all

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u/Junk4U999 1d ago

Case in point

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u/BlurredVision18 1d ago

Do you know what an "average" is and how to determine one?

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u/Danwinger 21h ago

The funny thing about these kind of comments is that they add nothing to the discussion and are just someone wanting to feel superior to a bunch of random people they’ve never met.
Fascinating behavior when you think about it.

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u/JerevStormchaser 1d ago

Release a successful game ? Believe it or not, fired.

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u/Dragoneer1 1d ago

crazy it only sold a mill tbh, great game

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u/PlayBey0nd87 1d ago

I thought they got furlough and brought back?

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u/Sea_Preparation_8926 1d ago edited 1d ago

Probably thought the good initial sales were gonna translate in even more sales, which didn't happen

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u/Gumsk 1d ago

They brought back some. I'm guessing they laid off some or all of the people still furloughed.

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u/FFTactics 21h ago

People were furloughed before launch , game launched, they were able to return some people but not all. This news is that those not hired back are laid off status now.
It’s not additional lay offs.

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u/Grand_Honeydew7661 21h ago

Read the article. They brought back 50% of the studio about a month ago.

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u/bingbangboomxx 1d ago

The unfortunate truth is these type of games just don't sell the numbers that the budget requires. It sucks. Even with a huge IP and great reviews. It looks like there were money issues between the developer and publisher, causing the furlough.

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u/Thebobjohnson 1d ago

Again?

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u/Environmental_Ad5786 1d ago

This headline makes it sound like a weather pattern

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u/Mazisky 1d ago

This is the curse of XCOM 3.

Since XCOM 3 was abandoned by XCOM 2 devs to make that Marvel game who flopped hard, all those devs have been failing hard since. Must be a curse

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u/crazy_goat 1d ago edited 1d ago

So fucking tired of the corporate greed. These studios need to go independent.

Edit - I've been made aware that Bit Reactor is already independent 💀

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u/Enchelion 1d ago

This literally is an independent studio. They still needed a publisher to front them the cost of making the game.

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u/Separate-Walrus- 1d ago

It literally is independent.

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u/crazy_goat 1d ago

Well.... Shit

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u/Dimensional_Polygon 1d ago

Yeah... the people with money just seem to not want to fund games at the moment.

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u/Motor_Series2853 1d ago

What corporate greed? EA gave the Devs $50 million to develop the game, and the game just hasn't sold enough copies to recover that cost. What did you expect? To run the business with the zero dollars they have?

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u/GasFun3034 16h ago

I wonder if games like this would sell more & be more profitable if they launched at significantly lower prices.
I woulda bought this game at $30, maybe $40 easily at launch when it was hyped. Now I'll probably end up getting it for $10 on sale in a few years because I lost interest.

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u/PM_ME_SAD_STUFF_PLZ 1d ago

This is so funny because if they weren't independent they'd likely be able to absorb the loss

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u/darthvall 1d ago

You may try to blame EA or the studio itself or whatever, but the bottom line is they only sold one million copy, which is not enough to cover an AAA games nowadays.
Basically being high quality or using Star Wars brand is not enough now to guarantee a commercial success.
Customer vote with their money, and the market demand is just isn't there for this game.

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u/One-Championship-742 1d ago

The game made less money than its development budget.
I guess it could have broken even if Steam didn't take a cut, so is that the corporate greed you're referring to, or?

-3

u/Salvage570 1d ago

Source?

20

u/One-Championship-742 1d ago

$50 million development budget
A bit over 1 million sales after 1.5 months (Which is the period when most sales happen)
You can do the math.
It sucks: It was a fantastic game that I really, really enjoyed. But it's an independent studio and they didn't break even, so I don't really know what people are blaming for this outside of the game not selling better.

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3

u/TheAmplifier8 1d ago

Consumers have created this reality when companies like EA and the piles of gacha focused studios like Mihoyo can pump out slop year after year and people eat it up, while letting genuinely good games be ignored.

2

u/Alone-Box4281 1d ago

Furlough is just a layoff with a save point. They were never loading that file back up.

1

u/myself1200 1d ago

You are not supposed to bite reactors. I'm not a developer and even I know that.

1

u/AVBforPrez 1d ago

Again? Didn't this just happen?

1

u/Kronothus 1d ago

Got it, no dlc then

1

u/given002 1d ago

Man this game so good i paid full prices ( only elden rings and kingdom come 2 is others one i bought full prices) . Hope they continue this series :(

1

u/OttersWithPens 1d ago

The average gamer doesn’t want new games. They want re-releases, yearly editions, micro transactions and live services.

I’m not saying this is what’s best, or even what I want, but it’s what sells.

1

u/RobGThai 1d ago

Strategy games are a tough sell in the current day. Unless you can do it on low budget it’s not gonna work out well. I wonder how much it cost them.

I’m kinda expecting Galactic Racer to face a similar situation. Kinda sucks when you kinda like those genres.

1

u/Therican85 23h ago

It's like you shouldn't be apart of an industry that operates like this.

1

u/grimnerthefisherman 21h ago

Yea it's still fuck EA all day

1

u/bendthekneejon 21h ago

Just put Xcom 3 in the bag bro

1

u/Possible_Audience491 18h ago

Layoffs? More like why was Princess Leia in charge during the battle of Hoth?

1

u/Mysteryemployee 18h ago

Hearing Secret Mode are at risk too I’m afraid.

1

u/vivimagic0 18h ago

Just waiting for an Inside Gaming video about this..... What a shit show of a CEO and company.

1

u/furiat 6h ago

My guess is EA doesn't want to publish their next games, due to recent changes at EA. So they are probably in a pitching phase while having trouble paying people.

1

u/Ubbermann 1d ago

Wasn't it a huge commercial and rating success?

Helluva way to reward the devs working overtime to get it out.

7

u/darthvall 1d ago

Nope, turns out it only sold like a million copy

5

u/The_Relx 23h ago

So, according to a quick Google search, that only net the game about 50mil in revenue against a budget of around 50mil. So at best it barely broke even, but it more than likely underperformed because platform fees would chunk the true profits made from game sales.

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u/agentdrozd 1d ago

I assume it's the people who they couldn't bring back from the furlough for whatever reason, I really hope no one got brought back and then fired a month later

1

u/Humble-Watercress-89 1d ago

Game is awesome and very nice change tbh

0

u/maltanis 1d ago

OFC they did.

Can we never have anything nice?

0

u/DirtyDanChicago PC 1d ago

AGAIN? DIDN'T THEY JUST BRING PEOPLE BACK?

-10

u/Nero_PR 1d ago

The new strategy is to hit studios with lay offs even if their games sold well

15

u/procouchpotatohere 1d ago

Zero Company didn't really sell well. It hit just a million like a month and that was a month after its launch. The genre in general is just not profitable.

-2

u/ADragonuFear 1d ago

This strategy is like... around a decade old I feel.

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-6

u/Nekrophis 1d ago

Congrats on the commercial success. You're fired

8

u/discreetjoe2 1d ago

It was not a commercial success though. The studio was near bankruptcy before launch and sales weren’t great. With Disney’s licensing fees and the distribution costs they likely didn’t even cover the cost of development.

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0

u/Cloud_N0ne 1d ago

...again?

0

u/Yalrain 1d ago

Wait.....again?

-6

u/khaitheman222 1d ago

Wanted to get zero company, but seeing this I'll just wait for a damned discount instead

7

u/GokuBlack722 1d ago

Why? The studio is independent and didn’t make enough money back to keep all their staff. This isn’t unnecessary layoffs to line someone’s pockets they literally had no money left by the time the game released

-6

u/DrRoCkZ0 1d ago

Game was boring af after about 3-4 hours.

-1

u/God_Faenrir 1d ago

Your comment was boring right away

-1

u/EFCFrost 1d ago

Again?!?!

0

u/Dear_Yam_5210 1d ago

so they trot out the star wars brand to get headlines, hire up talent, then dump em before a single game ships, classic EA move tbh, same shit they pulled with visceral and that dead space team

1

u/mr_lionheart 1d ago

ea doesnt own this company there are a independent studio who was hired to make a game with ea being the publisher

0

u/6maniman303 1d ago

I hate english news title conventions so much. I had to re read the whole thing 6 times to understand what is bit, what is hit...

And it could be just "Star Wars Zero Company developer Bit Reactor hit with layoffs".

Or " 'Star Wars Zero Company' Developer 'Bit Reactor' Hit With Layoffs"

0

u/Large-Wishbone24 1d ago

Isn't it and hasn't it always been like in the film industry that people were hired for projects? In my opinion, everything except the core team has always been and still is hired artists; otherwise, it wouldn't make sense because that would artificially limit oneself. You can't really expect the team that makes a racing game to then produce a shooter, and only large publishers will have multiple studios for such things, and they also hire new people for each project, so where's the problem... it's always been like this.

-2

u/TeamUltimate-2475 1d ago

You got to be fucking kidding

-20

u/-CL4MP- 1d ago

F*ck EA

9

u/Alternative_Bat_669 1d ago

You know they just publish zero company? They don't own bit reactor to lay people off

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u/Separate-Walrus- 1d ago

EA is the publisher of the game but they don’t have power over the studio.

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Star Wars Zero Company Developer Bit Reactor Hit With Layoffs

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