Star Wars: Zero Company is one of the most well-received titles of many games born from the sci-fi franchise over the years. For many of its developers, it matters not.
Around “80 percent of the team” at studio Bit Reactor was furloughed “weeks ago,” according to a report by Stephen Totilo, with just a “skeleton crew” left behind to work on the game and address bugs that may pop up after launch.
Totilo said a representative for Bit Reactor confirmed the furloughs yesterday, saying that it was the decision of the studio alone and not from either Star Wars owner Disney or the game’s publisher Electronic Arts.
Bit Reactor formed in 2021 and has apparently “run out of most of its money” according to the report, which is a real head-scratcher considering the big IP it worked on, but it may have more to do with a lawsuit than the game’s success or failure. Totilo said the lawsuit is “a she-said/he-said about whether [studio co-founder] Alison Kelly, until 2024 the chief operating officer of Bit Reactor, was a co-owner of the studio or whether it was solely owned by Greg Foertsch.” And so the workers pay the price in the end, as is normally the case.
The Bit Reactor rep told Totilo that the studio “hoped to bring furloughed workers back with restored pay, suggesting that a successful launch of the game could be impactful.” Let’s hope that this is indeed the case, since the game is being received quite well.
A top-selling game on Steam during its launch week, Zero Company was made by many people who worked on games like XCOM and Marvel’s Midnight Sons. The strategy RPG has an 85 critic score on Metacritic, and the sentiment around it has been very positive.
Destructoid received a review code the day before launch, so I’ve been gradually playing through it alongside some other games, and it’s certainly scratching that XCOM itch.
